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I. Executive Summary

In July 2006, Fidel Castro handed control of the Cuban
government over to his brother Raúl Castro. As the new head of state,
Raúl Castro inherited a system of abusive laws and institutions, as well
as responsibility for hundreds of political prisoners arrested during his
brother’s rule. Rather than dismantle this repressive machinery, Raúl
Castro has kept it firmly in place and fully active. Scores of political
prisoners arrested under Fidel Castro continue to languish in Cuba’s
prisons. And Raúl Castro’s government has used draconian laws and sham
trials to incarcerate scores more who have dared to exercise their fundamental
freedoms.

Raúl Castro’s government has relied in particular
on a provision of the Cuban Criminal Code that allows the state to imprison
individuals before they have committed a crime, on the suspicion that they
might commit an offense in the future. This “dangerousness”
provision is overtly political, defining as “dangerous” any
behavior that contradicts socialist norms. The most Orwellian of Cuba’s
laws, it captures the essence of the Cuban government’s repressive
mindset, which views anyone who acts out of step with the government as a
potential threat and thus worthy of punishment.

Despite significant obstacles to research, Human Rights
Watch documented more than 40 cases in which Cuba has imprisoned individuals
for “dangerousness” under Raúl Castro because they tried to
exercise their fundamental rights. We believe there are many more. The
“dangerous” activities in these cases have included handing out
copies of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, staging peaceful marches,
writing news articles critical of the government, and attempting to organize
independent unions.

The Raúl Castro government has applied the
“dangerousness” law not only to dissenters and critics of the
government, but to a broad range of people who choose not to cooperate with the
state. We found that failing to attend pro-government rallies, not belonging to
official party organizations, and being unemployed are all considered signs of
“antisocial” behavior, and may lead to “official
warnings” and even incarceration in Raúl Castro’s Cuba. In a
January 2009 campaign called “Operation Victory,” dozens of
individuals in eastern Cuba—most of them youth—were charged with
“dangerousness” for being unemployed. So was a man from Sancti
Spíritus who could not work because of health problems, and was
sentenced to two years’ imprisonment in August 2008 for being
unemployed.

In addition to “dangerousness,” Cuba has a wide
range of other laws that criminalize the exercise of fundamental freedoms,
including laws penalizing contempt, insubordination, and acts against the
independence of the state. Indeed, article 62 of the Cuban constitution
prohibits the exercise of any basic right that runs contrary to “the ends
of the socialist state.” Together with a judicial system that lacks
independence and systematically violates due process rights, Raúl
Castro’s government has employed such laws to imprison scores of peaceful
dissidents.

Imprisonment is only one of the many tactics the Cuban
government uses to repress fundamental freedoms. Dissidents who try to express
their views are often beaten, arbitrarily arrested, and subjected to public
acts of repudiation. The government monitors, intimidates, and threatens those
it perceives as its enemies. It isolates them from their friends and neighbors
and discriminates against their families.

Cuba attempts to justify this repression as a legitimate
response to a US policy aimed at toppling the Castro government. It is true
that the United States has a long history of intervention on the island, and
its current policy explicitly aims to support a change in Cuba’s
government. However, in the scores of cases Human Rights Watch examined for
this report, this argument falls flat.

The reason that human rights advocate Ramón
Velásquez Toranzo set out on a peaceful march across Cuba and journalist
Raymundo Perdigón Brito wrote articles critical of the Castro government
was not because they were agents of the US government, but rather because they
saw problems with their own. Yet because these dissidents expressed their opinions
openly, both were imprisoned by Raúl Castro’s government, like
scores of others. Rather than being a legitimate defense against a threat to
national security, these and other cases reveal a state that uses repression to
enforce conformity with its political agenda.

It is important to note that the term
“dissidents” in the Cuban context does not refer to a homogenous
group of people who share a single ideology, affiliation, or common objective.
Rather, it refers to anyone who—like Velásquez and
Perdigón—engages in activities the government deems contrary to
its political agenda. Some dissidents may advocate for democratic change or
reform of the socialist system from within; while others may be apolitical,
focusing instead on a single issue such as the right to practice their religion
or organize a trade union.

Dissidents are a small and significantly isolated segment of
the population. However, their marginalization is evidence not of the lack of
dissent in Cuba, but rather of the state’s ruthless efficiency in
suppressing it. Fear permeates all aspects of dissidents’ lives. Some
stop voicing their opinions and abandon their activities altogether; others
continue to exercise their rights, but live in constant dread of being
punished. Many more never express dissent to avoid reprisals. As human rights
defender Rodolfo Bartelemí Coba told Human Rights Watch in March 2009,
“We live 24 hours a day ready to be detained.” Ten days after
making that statement, Bartelemí was arrested and taken to prison
without trial, where he remains today.

While this report documents a systematic pattern of
repression, it does not intend to suggest that there are no outlets for dissent
whatsoever in Cuba. The last three years have, for example, witnessed the
emergence of an independent Cuban blogosphere, critical lyrics by musicians,
and most recently a series of government-organized public meetings to reflect
on Cuban socialism.

Upon closer examination, however, these examples show just
how circumscribed spaces of dissent are and, as a result, how incredibly
limited their impact is on society on the whole. While some bloggers speak to
problems in Cuba, they must publish their work through back
channels—saving documents on memory sticks and uploading entries through
illegal connections. Because an hour of internet use costs one-third of
Cubans’ monthly wages and is available exclusively in a few
government-run centers, only a tiny fraction of Cubans have the chance to read
such blogs—including, ironically, bloggers themselves. Some bands perform
lyrics that criticize the government, but their songs are banned from the
airwaves, their performances shut down, and their members harassed and
arbitrarily detained. And while it is true that Raúl Castro’s
government organized meetings recently to reflect on Cuban socialism, the
agenda for these discussions explicitly prohibited any talk of reforming the
single-party system.

Cuba has made important advances in the progressive
realization of some economic, social, and cultural rights such as education and
healthcare. For example, UNESCO has concluded that there is
near-universal literacy on the island and UNICEF has projected that the country
is on track to achieve most of the Millennium Development Goals. However, the
stark reality is that this progress has not been matched in respect for civil
and political rights.

The Raúl Castro government has at times signaled a
willingness to reconsider its long-standing disregard for human rights norms.
In February 2008, Cuba signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural
Rights (ICESCR), and commuted the death sentences of all prisoners except for
three individuals charged with terrorism. Yet the Castro government has yet to
ratify the ICCPR and ICESCR, and continues to flout many of the treaties’
core principles. And Cuban law still allows individuals who undermine the
independence of the state to be sentenced to death.

The Cuban government has for years refused to recognize the
legitimacy of independent human rights monitoring and has adamantly refused to
allow international monitors, such as the International Committee of the Red
Cross and international nongovernmental organizations like Human Rights Watch,
to visit the island and investigate human rights conditions. In researching
this report, Human Rights Watch made repeated written requests to the Raúl
Castro government for meetings with authorities and formal authorization to
conduct a fact-finding mission to the island. As in the past, the Cuban
government did not respond to any of our requests.

As a result, Human Rights Watch decided to conduct a
fact-finding mission to Cuba without official permission in June and July 2009.
During this trip, Human Rights Watch researchers conducted extensive interviews
in seven of the island’s fourteen provinces. We also conducted numerous
interviews via telephone from New York City. In total, we carried out
more than 60 in-depth interviews with human rights defenders, journalists, former
political prisoners, family members of current political prisoners, members of
the clergy, trade unionists, and other Cuban citizens.

Those interviews, together with extensive research from
January to November 2009, are the basis of the following findings:

The Legal Foundation of Repression in Cuba

Cuba’s laws empower the state to criminalize virtually
all forms of dissent. Article 62 of the Cuban constitution explicitly prohibits
Cubans from exercising their basic rights against the “ends of the
socialist state.” Cubans who dare to criticize the government are subject
to draconian criminal and “pre-criminal” charges, such as
“dangerousness.” They are exempted from due process guarantees.
They are denied meaningful judicial protection. And they are left without recourse
to international human rights mechanisms.

A person is considered to be in
a state of dangerousness due to antisocial behavior if the person... lives,
like a social parasite, off the work of others.

—Article
73 of the Criminal Code, on one kind of “antisocial behavior” that
constitutes “dangerousness.”

Political Prisoners

Raúl Castro’s government has imprisoned scores
of political prisoners using laws criminalizing dissent. In particular, Cuba
has relied on a “dangerousness” provision that allows authorities
to imprison individuals for exercising their fundamental freedoms, on the
grounds that their activities contradict “socialist morality.” The
provision has more broadly been applied to non-dissident Cubans who choose not
to work for the government, and are thus viewed as a threat. Meanwhile, Raúl
Castro continues to imprison scores of dissidents unjustly sentenced for
exercising their fundamental freedoms under Fidel Castro, including 53 human
rights defenders, journalists, civil society leaders, and other dissenters
arrested in a massive 2003 crackdown.

The authorities were always threatening
me, saying that if I did not distance myself from ‘the opposition’—if
I did not change my behavior—I was going to be arrested. I told them,
“You have to prove I committed a crime, but I haven’t done
anything.”

—William
Reyes Mir, who belonged to an unofficial political group in Banes. Reyes was
arrested in September 2007 and sentenced to two years of forced labor for
“dangerousness.”

Due Process Violations

Cuba systematically violates the due process rights of
dissenters from the moment they are arrested through their sham trials.
Political detainees are routinely denied access to legal counsel and family
visits, held in inhumane and dangerous conditions, and subjected to forced
interrogations. Neither detainees nor their families are adequately informed
about the charges against them, and political detainees may be held for months
or years without ever being formally tried for a crime. Nearly all trials of
political detainees are closed hearings lasting less than one hour, during
which dissidents are subjected to politically motivated rulings and even
falsification of evidence by security officials and prosecutors. Human Rights
Watch was unable to document a single case under the Raúl Castro
government where a court acquitted a political
detainee.

[The police] picked me up at
5:50 am while I was at home sleeping, and by 8:30 that morning they were
already reading me my sentence... They detained me on July 5 but the ruling
they gave me had been written on July 3. They didn’t allow me to have a
lawyer, and the hearing was conducted behind closed doors, without my family.
The trial lasted 15 or 20 minutes.

—Alexander
Santos Hernández, a political activist from Gibara, on his July 2006
arrest and summary trial. Santos was sentenced to four years for
“dangerousness.”

Inhumane Prisons

Cuba’s prison officials, like the Cuban government as
a whole, punish dissent. Conditions for political prisoners and common
prisoners alike are overcrowded, unhygienic, and unhealthy, leading to
extensive malnutrition and illness. Political prisoners who criticize the
government, refuse to participate in ideological “re-education,” or
engage in hunger strikes or other forms of protest are routinely subjected to
extended solitary confinement, beatings, restrictions of visits, and the denial
of medical care. Prisoners have no effective complaint mechanism to seek
redress, granting prison authorities total impunity. Taken together, these
forms of cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment may rise to the level of
torture.

The cells are one meter or
one-and-a-half meters wide by two meters long. You sleep during the day on a
concrete platform and at night you get a mattress, which is removed at
daybreak. You are not allowed to have any belongings, and the food is terrible...
Some cells have a little window, others none. Some cells have light, others
don’t.

—Víctor Yunier Fernández Martínez
describes the conditions in solitary confinement, where he was sent repeatedly
during his imprisonment for “dangerousness” from 2006 to 2009.
Fernández, a political activist, was incarcerated in the prisons of
Canaleta and 1580.

Everyday Forms of Repression

Dissenters are punished daily in nearly every aspect of
their lives. The Cuban government routinely uses short-term arrests to harass
dissidents or prevent them from participating in groups or activities
considered “counterrevolutionary.” Dissidents are beaten, publicly
humiliated, and threatened by security officers and groups of civilians tied to
the state. They are denied work, fired from jobs, and fined, placing
significant financial strain on their families. They are prevented from
exercising their right to travel within and outside of the island. And they are
subjected to invasive surveillance, which violates their privacy and gathers
information that can later be used to imprison them. These tactics of
repression are consistently visited on the families of dissenters as
well.

The rapid response brigade was
waiting for us, carrying wooden bats and metal rods, as though they were ready
to beat us. They insulted us, saying we were worms, the scum of society. They
called my mother and me whores and sluts.

—Rufina
Velásquez González describing one of the groups that harassed her
and her parents when they set out on a peaceful march across Cuba in December
2006 calling for the release of all political prisoners.

State of Fear

Cuba’s systematic repression has created a pervasive
climate of fear among dissidents and, when it comes to expression of political
views, in Cuban society as a whole. This climate hinders the exercise of basic
rights, pressuring Cubans to show their allegiance to the state, while
discouraging any form of criticism. Dissidents feel as though they are
constantly being watched—a sense that fosters distrust among peers and
self-censorship. They fear they will be arrested at any moment, and have no
confidence in the willingness of the government to protect their rights or give
them a fair trial. This climate of fear has led to the near-complete isolation
of dissidents from their communities, friends, and sometimes even families,
which together with other forms of repression has had profound emotional
consequences, including depression and signs of trauma.

No one is allowed to talk to
me. People who come to my house are immediately called by state security and
reprimanded. Then these people—for fear of losing their jobs, for fear
that [the authorities] will take it out on someone in their family—simply
stop talking to me.

—Former
political prisoner Eduardo Pacheco Ortíz, who was imprisoned for
“dangerousness” in January 2008, describes his treatment by
neighbors in Matanzas since his release.

Recommendations

Given the effectiveness of Cuba’s repressive machinery
and the Castro government’s firm grip on power, the pressure needed to
bring progress on human rights cannot come solely from within Cuba. In order to
succeed, it must be supported by effective pressure on the part of the
international community. Currently, this effective pressure—whether from
Latin American countries, the United States, Canada, or Europe—is
lacking.

Efforts by the US government to press for change by imposing
a sweeping economic embargo have proven to be a costly and misguided failure.
The embargo imposes indiscriminate hardship on the Cuban population as a whole,
and has done nothing to improve the situation of human rights in Cuba. Rather
than isolating Cuba, the policy has isolated the United States, enabling the
Castro government to garner sympathy abroad while simultaneously alienating
Washington’s potential allies.

There is no question: the Cuban government bears full and
exclusive responsibility for the abuses it commits. However, so long as the
embargo remains in place, the Castro government will continue to manipulate US
policy to cast itself as a Latin American David standing up to the US Goliath,
a role it exploits skillfully.

Just as the US embargo policy has proved counterproductive,
so have the policies of the European Union and Canada failed to exert effective
pressure on Cuba. The EU’s Common Position sets clear human rights
benchmarks for economic cooperation with Cuba, but the cost of noncompliance
has been insufficient to compel change by the Castro government. Canada lacks
such benchmarks, promoting significant investment in the island at the same
time as it decries the Cuban government’s abuses.

Worse still, Latin American governments across the political
spectrum have been reluctant to criticize Cuba, and in some cases have openly
embraced the Castro government, despite its dismal human rights record.
Countries like Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador hold Cuba up as a model, while
others quietly admit its abuses even as they enthusiastically push for
Cuba’s reintegration into regional bodies such as the Organization of
American States (OAS). The silence of the Latin governments condones
Cuba’s abusive behavior, and perpetuates a climate of impunity that
allows repression to continue. This is particularly troubling coming from a
region in which many countries have learned firsthand the high cost of
international indifference to state-sponsored repression.

Not only have all of these policies—US, European,
Canadian, and Latin American—failed individually to improve human rights
in Cuba, but their divided and even contradictory nature has allowed the Cuban
government to evade effective pressure and deflect criticism of its practices.

To remedy this continuing failure, the US must end its
failed embargo policy. It should shift the goal of its Cuba strategy away from
regime change and toward promoting human rights. In particular, it should
replace its sweeping bans on travel and trade with Cuba with more effective
forms of pressure.

This move would fundamentally shift the balance in the Cuban
government’s relationship with its own people and the international
community. No longer would Cuba be able to manipulate the embargo as a pretext
for repressing its own people. Nor would other countries be able to blame the
US policy for their own failures to hold Cuba accountable for its abuses.

However, ending the current embargo policy by itself will
not bring an end to Cuba’s repression. Only a multilateral approach will
have the political power and moral authority to press the Cuban government to
end its repressive practices. Therefore, before changing its policy, the US
should work to secure commitments from the EU, Canada, and Latin American
allies that they will join together to pressure Cuba to meet a single, concrete
demand: the immediate and unconditional release of all political prisoners.

In order to enforce this demand, the multilateral coalition
should establish a clear definition of who constitutes a political
prisoner—one that includes all Cubans imprisoned for exercising their
fundamental rights, including those incarcerated for the pre-criminal offense of
“dangerousness” and the 53 dissidents still in prison from the 2003
crackdown. It should also set a firm deadline for compliance, granting the Raúl
Castro government six months to meet this demand.

Most important, the members of the coalition should commit
themselves to holding the Cuban government accountable should it fail to
release its political prisoners. The penalties should be significant enough
that they bear real consequences for the Cuban government. And they should be
focused enough to target the Cuban leadership, rather than the Cuban population
on the whole. Options include adopting targeted sanctions on the government
officials, such as travel bans and asset freezes; and withholding any new forms
of foreign investment until Cuba meets the demand.

During the six-month period, Latin American countries,
Canada, the EU, and the US should be able to choose individually whether or not
to impose their own restrictions on Cuba. Some may enact targeted sanctions on
Cuba’s leadership immediately, while others may put no restrictions on
Cuba during that time.

Regardless, if the Castro government is still holding political
prisoners at the end of six months, Cuba must be held accountable. All of the
countries must honor their agreement and impose joint punitive measures on Cuba
that will effectively pressure the Castro government to release its political
prisoners.

On the other hand, if the Cuban government releases all
political prisoners—whether before or after the six month period is
complete—these punitive measures should be lifted. Then, the multilateral
coalition should devise a sustained, incremental strategy to push the Raúl
Castro government to improve its human rights record. This strategy should
focus on pressuring Cuba to reform its laws criminalizing dissent, dismantle
the repressive institutions that enforce them, and end abuses of basic rights.
And the impact of the strategy should be monitored regularly to ensure it is
not creating more repression than it curbs.

Ultimately, it is the Raúl Castro government that
bears responsibility for such abuses—and has the power to address them.
Yet as the last three years of Raúl Castro’s rule show, Cuba will
not improve its human rights record unless it is pressured to do so.

II. Illustrative Cases

Ramón Velásquez Toranzo set out on his march
on December 10, 2006—International Human Rights Day. With him were his
wife, Bárbara, and their 18-year-old daughter, Rufina. Each of them
carried a sign. The signs read: “respect for human rights,”
“freedom for political prisoners,” and “no more repression against
the peaceful opposition.” Their goal was to walk the entire length of the
island of Cuba, from east to west.

They marched silently. At night, they slept on the sides of
roads, in bus stops, or in the homes of people who took them in. After a few
days, security officers began trailing them. On the outskirts of
Holguín, a group affiliated with the government known as a “rapid
response brigade” surrounded them with bats and metal rods. They called
Velásquez and his family “mercenaries” and “whores,”
and threatened to rape Bárbara and Rufina. Police looked on and did
nothing.

Security officials arrested the family as they walked
through Holguín. Velásquez was thrown in jail, while his wife and
daughter were forcibly returned to their home in Las Tunas. When
Velásquez was released four days later, they continued to march west.
Twice, cars tried to run them over, and they had to dive off the road to avoid
being hit. More brigades taunted them. Security officers threatened them.
Still, they kept marching.

They reached Camagüey on January 19, 2007, and were
arrested again. Velásquez was held for four days and then taken to a
municipal court. That he had not committed a crime did not matter; under
Cuba’s “dangerousness” law, individuals can be imprisoned
simply when courts determine they are likely to commit a crime in the future.

The state’s only evidence against him was a series of
“official warnings” (advertencias oficiales) for being
unemployed—issued while he was on his march—which he had never seen
before. His lawyer, whom he met five minutes before the trial, defended him
vigorously at the outset of the hearing. Then, the judge called a recess and
invited the defense lawyer to his quarters. When the lawyer returned, she
stopped defending Velásquez and did not speak for the rest of the trial.

The trial lasted less than an hour, and the judge sentenced
Velásquez to three years in jail. He was bused to a prison, stripped
down to his underwear, and thrown into a solitary confinement cell. The tiny
space had no bed—only a concrete floor that flooded with water every time
it rained. When his family brought him food to supplement the meager prison
rations, guards repeatedly left it outside his cell to rot.

His wife, Bárbara, fell into a deep depression
following his incarceration, not leaving her bed for weeks, while his son,
René, was fired from his job without warning. His daughter Rufina, who
continued to monitor human rights and report on abuses, was subjected to
constant surveillance. Authorities warned her that she would suffer the same
fate as her father if she did not change her behavior. She eventually fled to
the United States, where she lives today.

Alexander Santos Hernández was first put on trial for
his political activities in November 2004. He was working on the Varela
Project, a peaceful campaign to gather signatures from Cuban citizens calling
for democratic change, and had hosted open meetings in his home in Gibara,
Holguín, to discuss the project. One day, as he was leaving a gathering,
a police officer told him to come by the station for questioning. When he
failed to report to the station, he was sentenced to six months of forced labor
for “disobedience to authority.” He was 29 years old.

When Santos completed his sentence, he resumed his
participation in nonviolent political activities. He joined two small political
groups not recognized by the government (and thus illegal)—the Cuban
Liberal Movement and the Eastern Democratic Alliance. Both were dedicated to
promoting political change and respect for basic rights in Cuba. He attended
meetings, voiced criticism of the government, and documented abuses by
government officials.

As a result, Santos was subject to myriad forms of repression.
In 2005, his boss fired him from his job as a martial arts instructor. When
Santos went to the state employment center, an official there told him that
“worms do not deserve employment.” Santos was the target of six
public acts of repudiation from 2005 to 2006. Groups of pro-government
civilians gathered outside his home and insulted him, calling him a
“mercenary” and a “traitor.” More than once, they broke
down his door and ransacked a collection of books on democracy and other
“subversive” topics that he maintained as a free library.

In June 2006, Santos was attacked in the street by a
“rapid response brigade,” a group designed to protect the
government against threats from “counterrevolutionaries.” Without
provocation, eight men from the brigade beat Santos severely, he later told
Human Rights Watch. The group was led by a major in the police force, whom
Santos knew from having been detained several times. The major told Santos that
the next time he saw him riding his motorcycle, he was going to run him over.

On July 5, 2006, police arrested Santos in his home.
According to Santos, “[The police] picked me up at 5:50AM while I was at
home sleeping, and by 8:30 that morning they were already reading me my
sentence.” He was taken to the Municipal Court of Gibara, where he was
charged with “dangerousness.”

Santos was not appointed a lawyer, and his family was not
notified of the hearing. The trial, which lasted between 15 and 20 minutes, was
completely closed to the public. According to Santos, the prosecutor’s
only argument was that he was a “dissident,” which constituted a
danger to society. The judge sentenced him to four years in prison for
“dangerousness.” Santos said the sentence itself, which he was
allowed to read, was dated July 3, 2006—two days before his trial.
Santos’s family was notified about the decision after it had been issued.
His mother hired a lawyer to appeal his case, but the Provincial Court of
Holguín upheld Santos’s sentence.

Santos was sent to Cuba Sí! prison in Holguín,
where he said was put in a cell with dozens of prisoners convicted of violent
crimes. His cellmates were serving between 20 and 60 years, while Santos was
serving four. The food he was given was inadequate and rotten, and he quickly
developed health problems, including serious stomach ailments and painful
pustules on his face. Despite his repeated requests, authorities would not
allow him to see a doctor. As a result, he went on hunger strike to demand
medical attention. He did not eat for 23 days, until he was finally granted a
doctor’s visit.

Santos witnessed beatings of fellow political prisoners in
prison. The most severe was in February 2007, when journalist Víctor Rolando
Arroyo Carmona—one of 75 individuals arrested in a massive crackdown in
2003—tried to carry some of his leftover lunch out of the dining hall.
Arroyo, who was 55 at the time, was suffering digestive problems and had been
given permission by authorities to finish eating his food in his cell. Santos
watched a prison guard stop Arroyo and ask him where he was going with the
food. When Arroyo answered and kept walking, the guard punched him in the back
of the head, knocking him to the ground, and beat him while he was on the
floor. Santos said the officer punched Arroyo several times in the face and the
body, shattering his glasses.

In 2008, renowned Cuban singer Silvio Rodríguez gave
a series of concerts in Cuba’s prisons. In the days before he came to
Cuba Sí! prison, Santos said, officials rounded up all of the political
prisoners and gay prisoners and moved them to another facility.

Santos was released on parole in December 2008. He said a
plainclothes police officer was permanently stationed outside of his house, and
anyone who visited him was threatened. Authorities told one of Santos’s
oldest friends that if she continued to visit him, they would expel her
daughter from school. She has since stopped coming to see him.

Santos was given a short contract as a bricklayer when he
was released, but he told Human Rights Watch that he since had difficulty
finding a job because of his reputation as a dissident. He worried the
authorities would revoke his parole for being unemployed, which is considered a
form of “antisocial behavior” under the “dangerousness”
provision.

Jorge Barrera Alonso had been working in a comedor obrero,
or state-run workplace cafeteria, when one day his boss fired him with no
advance warning, saying he was “not suited” for the job. Shortly
before his dismissal, Barrera had started attending the meetings of an
unauthorized political group that is critical of the Cuban government. He spent
weeks looking for a new job, but was repeatedly turned away. Unable to find
work, he took a job working for a vegetable seller who lacked official
government authorization, and thus was considered illegal.

Barrera continued to attend meetings of the unofficial group
and began participating in public activities raising awareness about political
rights. In 2006, he and a friend were distributing copies of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights on the street. Police arrived, arresting Barrera.
His friend managed to escape and called Barrera’s wife, “Hilda
Galán,”[4] to tell
her about his arrest. Galán went to every police station in the city
looking for her husband, but all of the officials she spoke to alleged they had
not heard of him. Galán then went to file a report with a municipal
complaints office that her husband had disappeared after being arrested by the
police. She later received a call from one of the stations she had visited,
saying that Barrera was in their custody.

Barrera spent five days in police detention, during which he
was allowed one 30-minute visit with his wife and their two-year-old daughter.
An officer stood by throughout their visit and explicitly warned Barrera and
his wife not to discuss anything related to his arrest or detention,
threatening to cut short their meeting if they did.

In the time leading up to his trial, Barrera was denied
access to a lawyer and held in a small cell with prisoners who had been
sentenced for violent crimes. The police informed Barrera of his trial only
three hours before it was to take place. He was allowed to call his wife, who
barely made it to court in time for his hearing. Before the trial began, Barrera
asked if he could appoint his own lawyer, but authorities responded that they
could not delay the trial and the state-appointed lawyers would serve the same
function.

The trial, in which the state prosecutor accused Barrera of
“dangerousness,” lasted less than an hour. His wife described the
process as follows:

The trial was crazy. First of all, they didn’t let
him speak. The prosecutor spoke of things that I had never heard of—that
[my husband] would associate with dangerous people, delinquents; that they were
going to punish him in order to prevent him from doing something against other
people’s property; that he did not work; that he did not study; that he
was not a part of the revolutionary process. And he is not like that.[5]

The state offered no proof and presented no witnesses to
support its accusations, and Barrera’s state-assigned lawyer made no
counter-arguments to refute the charges. The judge denied Barrera the right to
speak in his own defense, despite his expressed wish to do so. Barrera was
sentenced to four years in prison.

Over the subsequent two-and-a-half years, Barrera was moved
to three different prisons, all of which were located a considerable distance
from his home, making it difficult for his wife to visit him. In each prison,
he was subjected to solitary confinement and other punishments for refusing to
wear a prisoner’s uniform or partake in mandatory
“re-education.”

To mark Human Rights Day on December 10, 2008, Barrera began
to read aloud to his cellmates from a book his wife had brought him called Your
Rights (Tus Derechos), which includes the text of the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights. According to his wife, whom Barrera later told about the
incident:

An official arrived, roughed him up, and told him that he had
to eat the book. [Barrera] said that he wasn’t going to eat the book,
that he wasn’t some animal that eats books, and that there was nothing
wrong with the book.[6]

Authorities confiscated the book and threw Barrera in
solitary confinement.

Following days of solitary confinement, Barrera later told
his wife, he was taken to a municipal court where he was tried for contempt for
authority (desacato). He was denied the right to choose his own lawyer,
the proceedings were closed to the public and conducted in summary fashion, and
no evidence was presented against him except the accusations of the prison
officials. His wife was not even informed that the trial was taking place.
Barrera told his wife he had been sentenced to six additional years, bringing
his combined sentence to ten years. He never received a copy of his sentence,
nor any record that the hearing had taken place.

After Barrera was sentenced, his wife gave an interview to
the foreign press denouncing his mistreatment and closed-door trial. In the
aftermath, she said, prison officials cut off her visitation rights and phone
calls with her husband.

Juan Luís Rodríguez Desdín, a
35-year-old dissident from Banes, Holguín, received several official
warnings for “dangerousness” in 2006. The warnings accused him of
“antisocial behavior,” he said, and advised him to abandon his
“counterrevolutionary” activities. Rodríguez said his
“antisocial behavior” was rooted in his participation in a pair of unofficial
civil society groups, which documented human rights abuses and promoted
political change. He attended gatherings and spoke openly about democratic
change in Cuba.

On July 6, 2006, four policemen came to
Rodríguez’s house and arrested him. He was taken to a police
station, where he was held incommunicado for four days. He had no access to a
lawyer and was not allowed to receive any family visits. Rodríguez was
brought before a judge in a provincial court on July 10 and charged with
“dangerousness.” He said the prosecutor accused him of being
“disaffected with the government,” “opposed to the
revolutionary system,” and therefore “not suited to live in
society.” He was sentenced to four years in prison. He did not bother to
appeal, he said, because “when they sentence you for this crime,
it’s not worth appealing.” He was sent to Cuba Sí! prison.

Rodríguez’s problems with prison authorities
began as soon as he arrived. He did not want to participate in mandatory
“re-education” classes, which he said were dedicated to political
indoctrination. As a result, he was placed in solitary confinement for 17 days.
The cell had an open toilet in the middle of the floor, a cement platform for a
bed, and, for a blanket, the leaves of a plantain tree.

When not in solitary confinement, Rodríguez was held
in overcrowded cells of 80 to 100 prisoners convicted of violent crimes. He
said that he and the other political prisoners were moved to different cells
every few months—a strategy that he said left them more vulnerable to
attacks by common prisoners, who were hostile to newcomers. He was also repeatedly
punished for using his telephone calls to report abuses to human rights
defenders outside of the prison. He said he was denied meals, medical
attention, and access to the outdoors, and that there was no one to report the
abuses to inside the prison.

Rodríguez was released on parole in July 2008, and
resumed his participation in monitoring human rights and attending unsanctioned
meetings. He lived under constant surveillance, he said, and was detained
several times, during which authorities threatened to re-arrest him if he did
not abandon his “antisocial behavior.”

His family also suffered constant harassment. An official
visited Rodríguez’s wife, telling her that she would save herself
trouble by divorcing her husband. His mother was issued citations and
threatened by officials, and police conducted an investigation into his
father’s activities as well.

Human Rights Watch last spoke to Rodríguez in
April 2009. According to human rights defenders in Cuba, the following month he
was arrested again, and sentenced to two years for “public disorder”
in a closed, summary trial.[8]

III. Methodology

Lack of Cooperation by the Cuban Government

The Cuban government aggressively works to prevent Cubans
from documenting human rights abuses and sharing information with the
international community. Nearly all dissidents’ trials are closed to
independent observers, journalists, human rights defenders, and foreign
diplomats. The individuals detained, prosecuted, imprisoned, or subject to any
other disciplinary action are consistently denied documentation of their cases.

In the rare instances that dissidents or their family
members are allowed access to trials, official documents, or other information about
repression, they face considerable obstacles and risks in trying to disseminate
it. Cubans lack basic access to mediums of communication such as the internet,
fax machines, and sometimes even phones—and the channels that are
available are under constant surveillance by the government. Moreover,
individuals who do share such information with international human rights
organizations, foreign media outlets, or multilateral institutions are subject
to harassment, loss of employment, beatings, and imprisonment under laws that
explicitly criminalize the dissemination of such information.

Human Rights Watch repeatedly requested meetings with the
Cuban government to discuss the issues raised in this report, directing
requests to the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, D.C. and the Permanent
Mission of Cuba to the United Nations New York. We also requested permission to
visit Cuba, in hopes that the government would break with its practice of
denying international human rights delegations access to the island.
Unfortunately, Cuban officials never responded to any of these requests (See
Appendix 2: Human Rights Watch Letters to the Cuban Government).

This overall lack of transparency underscores the central
finding of this report: not only does the Cuban government abuse fundamental
freedoms, but it even punishes the documentation of such repression.

Sources and Research

In spite of these obstacles, Human Rights Watch was able to
conduct more than 60 extensive interviews with human rights defenders, journalists,
former political prisoners, family members of current political prisoners,
members of the clergy, independent trade unionists, members of unauthorized
political groups, and other Cuban citizens between December 2008 and September
2009. The interviews were conducted over the phone and during a fact-finding
mission to Cuba in June and July 2009, during which we conducted interviews in
seven of the country’s fourteen provinces. These testimonies, drawn from
a range of civil society members from across Cuba, establish a clear pattern of
repression, from the tactics used to the types of individuals targeted.

Human Rights Watch was able to obtain copies of nearly
twenty documents, including indictments of political prisoners, official
warnings for “dangerousness,” refusals of parole and permission to
travel, and other legal documents. These documents, which were acquired from
family members of political prisoners, unofficial civil society groups, and
local human rights defenders, affirm the patterns of abuse established by the
testimonies. In addition, we conducted an in-depth review of Cuba’s laws,
which provide the legal underpinning for criminalizing dissent. Finally, we
extensively researched press accounts— both from Cuba’s government-run
papers and from the island’s independent (and thus illegal)
press—as well as reports produced by local groups and international
bodies such as the UN.

These sources of information are as diverse as any that can
be assembled in examining a country whose government fails to cooperate with
international human rights monitoring. Together, they allowed Human Rights
Watch to establish the systematic pattern of abuse by Raúl
Castro’s government documented in this report.

Who Is a “Dissident”?

This report will use the term “dissident” to
refer to any individual who expresses dissent toward the government. This
includes a broad range of nonviolent actors in Cuba, including human rights
defenders, journalists, and trade unionists, as well as members of political
groups, religious organizations, and other civil society groups not recognized
by the Cuban government, and thus considered illegal. It also consists of
people unaffiliated with any group who criticize the government or who abstain
from cooperating with the state in some way. These diverse individuals do not
share a single ideology, affiliation, or objective.

It is not uncommon for dissidents in Cuba to exercise their
dissent through more than one medium. A person, for example, may belong to an
unauthorized political group and simultaneously monitor human rights abuses. We
consider this individual a human rights defender, a political activist, and
a dissident. At points in this report we will refer to such individuals solely
using the umbrella term of “dissident.” The Cuban government,
however, does not differentiate between these individuals or their forms of
expression, branding all dissent as “counterrevolutionary” activity
and thus worthy of punishment.

Anonymity and Security

Because of the risk for Cubans in speaking to outside
organizations, Human Rights Watch took several precautionary steps to protect
the security of its interviewees. All individuals with whom we spoke were given
the option to remain anonymous in the report, to exclude information that might
reveal their identities, or to leave their stories out of the report
altogether.

In preparation for its fact-finding mission to Cuba, Human
Rights Watch did not inform contacts of the pending visit so as not to attract
surveillance or put individuals at risk. When conducting research on the
island, we limited interviews to roughly an hour and did not stay for longer
than necessary in any one location. Where interviews in Cuba are cited in the
report, some names, dates, and locations of sources have been omitted. In spite
of these precautions, some individuals interviewed for this report suffered
reprisal after speaking to Human Rights Watch.

IV. The Legal Foundation of Repression in Cuba

Cuban law empowers the state to criminalize virtually all
forms of dissent. While it includes broad statements affirming fundamental
rights, Cuban law also grants officials extraordinary authority to penalize
individuals who attempt to exercise their rights. All rights are conditional on
compliance with the government. Article 62 of the constitution explicitly
states that no rights may be exercised against the state and makes punishable
any failure to respect this subordination of rights.

Cubans who dare to criticize the government are subject to
draconian criminal and “pre-criminal” charges. These include the
Orwellian “dangerousness” provision, which can be used to punish
individuals who have not yet committed a crime, on the suspicion that they will
commit one in the future; as well as the National Protection Law, which is so
broad that it renders any criticism of the government prosecutable as a form of
collaboration with the US embargo and thus treason.

Cuba’s judiciary lacks independence, denying
dissidents meaningful judicial protection and ensuring that those tried will
not receive a fair trial. The constitution states that the judiciary is
“subordinated hierarchically” to the executive and legislative
branches, which have the power to remove judges at any time. And the Cuban
government denies victims of abuse virtually all external protections by
refusing to allow monitoring by independent domestic groups, international
human rights organizations, and groups such as the International Committee of
the Red Cross (ICRC).

Cuban authorities routinely characterize peaceful government
opponents as “counterrevolutionaries,” “mercenaries,”
and “traitors,” and then use these classifications to sentence them
under laws protecting Cuban sovereignty.

Cuba’s invocation of state security interests to
control nonviolent dissent—for acts as innocuous as publishing articles
critical of the government, handing out copies of human rights treaties, or
holding peaceful marches—represents a clear abuse of authority. Under the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, restrictions of fundamental rights are
only permissible:

for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for
the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of
morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.[9]

Cuba’s efforts to silence critics fall far outside of
these limits.

The Johannesburg Principles on National Security, Freedom of
Expression and Access to Information specify certain types of expression that
should always be protected, including expression that:

“advocates non-violent change of government policy
or the government itself”;

“constitutes criticism of, or insult to, the nation,
the state or its symbols, the government, its agencies, or public
officials”; and

“is directed at communicating information about
alleged violations of international human rights standards or
international humanitarian law.”[10]

All of these forms of expression are punishable under Cuban
law.

Contempt

Cuba penalizes anyone who “threatens, libels or
slanders, defames, affronts or in any other way insults or offends, with the
spoken word or in writing, the dignity or decorum of an authority, public
functionary, or his agents or auxiliaries.”[11]
Such expressions of contempt for authority (desacato) are punishable by
three months to one year in prison, plus a fine. If the person demonstrates
contempt for the president of the Council of the State, the president of the
National Assembly, or other high ranking officials—the sanction is
imprisonment for one to three years.[12]

Contempt or “insult” laws, which criminalize expressions deemed to
offend the honor of public officials and institutions, directly contravene
international human rights norms.[13] The
Inter-American and European human rights systems both consider contempt and
insult laws incompatible with the free debate essential to democratic society.
In a landmark 1995 report, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
(IACHR) concluded that these laws are incompatible with article 13 of the
American Convention on Human Rights, which protects the right to freedom of
thought and expression. The commission noted that “the fear of criminal
sanctions necessarily discourages people from voicing their opinions on issues
of public concern particularly when the legislation fails to distinguish
between facts and value judgments.”[14]

Similarly the European Court of Human Rights has stressed
that the protection of freedom of expression must extend not only to
information or ideas that are widely accepted, but also to those that
“offend, shock or disturb.” As the European Court noted in a case
involving a politician accused of insulting the government of Spain,
“Such are the demands of that pluralism, tolerance and broadmindedness
without which there is no democratic society.”[15]
In a joint declaration, the special rapporteurs on freedom of expression of the
United Nations, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and
the Organization of American States recommended in 2000 that "laws which
provide special protection for public figures, such as desacato laws,
should be repealed."[16]

Insubordination

The Cuban Criminal Code outlaws a range of forms of
insubordination to authorities, including “disobedience,”
“resistance,” and “attacks” on government officials.
Someone who “disobeys the decisions of the authorities or public
functionaries”—an act of desobedencia—may be punished
with imprisonment of three months to one year.[17] An
individual who “resists an authority, public functionary, or his agents
or auxiliaries in the exercise of his functions”—an act of resistencia—may
be punished with imprisonment of three months to one year. If the resistance
occurs while the authority is carrying out an arrest, the prison sentence may
rise to five years.[18] And an
individual who “employs violence or intimidation against an authority,
public functionary or his agents and auxiliaries”—an act of atentado—may
incur a sanction of one to eight years, depending on the nature of the attack.[19]

The UN Committee against Torture raised concern about these
“nebulous offences, namely ‘disrespect’, ‘resisting
authority’ and ‘enemy propaganda’,” in a 1998 report on
Cuba, noting that such laws posed a risk “because of the uncertainty of
their constituent elements and the room they provide for misuse and
abuse.”[20]

It is appropriate to criminalize physical attacks on
officials and there are limited circumstances in which even acts of
disobedience and resistance to officials may be properly outlawed, as with
suspects resisting arrest. But, as a number of cases documented here
illustrate, Cuba uses these overly broad provisions to punish individuals who
engage in peaceful activities, including forming independent unions and
attending unsanctioned meetings.

Collaboration
with the United States

The Law for the Protection of Cuban National Independence
and the Economy[21] (Ley
de Protección de la Independencia Nacional y la Economía de Cuba,
hereafter the National Protection Law), which took effect in March 1999,
creates harsh penalties for actions that could be interpreted as supporting or
collaborating with the objectives of the US Helms-Burton Act.

Helms-Burton, which became US law in March 1996, tightened
the US economic embargo on Cuba and set out a plan to assist Cuba once it began
a transition to democracy.[22] In
response, Cuban authorities passed the National Protection Law, which
prohibits:

those actions designed to support, facilitate, or
collaborate with the objectives of the “Helms-Burton” Law, the
blockade, and the economic war against our people, leading toward the
destruction of internal order, the destabilization of the country and the
liquidation of the socialist state and the independence of Cuba.[23]

The National Protection Law is often used in conjunction
with article 91 of the Cuban Criminal Code (hereafter article 91), which punishes
any act made “for the purpose of undermining the independence of the
Cuban state or the integrity of its territory” with ten to twenty years
in prison or the death penalty.[24]

While the preamble to the National Protection Law provides
that it will not infringe upon the “fundamental guarantees”
afforded by the Cuban constitution,[25] most of
the specific provisions of the law target dissemination of opinions or
exchanges of information—activities that should be protected rather than
penalized. The law’s overly broad definition of proscribed activities
grants officials extraordinary authority to punish government opponents for
exercising dissent.

For example, the law criminalizes the accumulation,
reproduction, or distribution of “material with a subversive
character” with three to eight years of imprisonment.[26]
Cubans risk two to five years in prison for ”collaborating in any way
with radio or television stations ... or other foreign media” deemed to
be advancing Helms-Burton and related objectives.[27]

The law also creates seven- to twenty-year penalties for
persons who commit “any act designed to impede or prejudice the economic
relations of the Cuban state or the economic relations of any industrial,
commercial, or financial institution or any other type of institution.”
Those whose actions influence the US government to take measures against
foreign investors in Cuba face the longest sanctions under this provision.[28]

Association

Although Cuban law guarantees the rights of association and
assembly, it also empowers the state to deny these rights to groups that are
critical of the government.[29]
Cuba’s Associations Law (Ley de Asociaciones) entrusts the Justice
Ministry with reviewing all aspiring associations. According to the law, the
ministry must refuse legal status to groups:

“whose activities could prove damaging to social
interests”;

“whose applications demonstrate the impossibility of
attaining their proposed objectives and activities”; and

“whose objectives or denomination is similar or
identical to another registered [association],” among other
qualifications.[30]

These regulations condition the right to associate upon
cooperation with the “social interests” of the state and other
arbitrary guidelines, effectively allowing the government to deny recognition
to any group critical of its actions.

Even associations that are granted legal status are subject
to constant review by the state, and may have their recognition revoked at any
time. The Regulations for the Associations Law (Reglamento de la Ley de
Asociaciones)empowers government officials to disband any
association “whose activities become damaging to the social
welfare.”[31]

The government has consistently refused to recognize
associations that are critical of its policies and practices. Human Rights
Watch was unable to document a single local civil society organization that
expresses dissent—including alternative political parties, human rights
groups, independent labor unions, journalist associations, and other
groups—that has received approval from the state to operate.

Not only is recognition denied to such groups, but
individuals who participate in “illicit” groups, meetings, or
demonstrations without state authorization are subject to harassment,
discrimination, and even criminal sanctions. According to the Criminal Code,
belonging to an “illicit” association may be punished with
imprisonment for three months to a year, as well as fines; while attending an
unapproved meeting or demonstration may result in fines and a sentence of one
to three months.[32]

“Dangerousness”

The most Orwellian of all of Cuba’s laws is the
“pre-criminal” offense of “dangerousness.” A law which
has been in existence for some time, it allows individuals deemed
“dangerous” to be imprisoned before they have committed or planned
any crime, merely on the suspicion that they are likely to offend in the
future.[33] Not
only is the law completely arbitrary and subjective, but it is also explicitly
political. Human Rights Watch opposes the unlawful use of preventative and
pre-emptive detention—in particular for the purpose of social control and
when it circumvents minimum procedural guarantees—irrespective of the
context or the government implementing it for this reason.[34]

The Criminal Code defines “dangerousness” as
“the special proclivity of a person to commit crimes, demonstrated by
conduct that is observed to be in manifest contradiction with the norms of socialist
morality.”[35] In
other words, “dangerousness” is a pre-criminal state in
which a person’s behavior suggests that he or she is of the type likely
to commit a crime in the future. This behavior may manifest itself in habitual
drunkenness, drug addiction, or “antisocial behavior.”[36]
When “dangerousness” is applied to persons who voice dissent, it is
most commonly for exhibiting “antisocial behavior.”[37]

A person engaged in “antisocial behavior” is one
who:

habitually breaks the rules of social coexistence by
committing acts of violence, or by other provocative acts, violates the rights
of others or by his or her general behavior breaks the rules of coexistence or
disturbs the order of the community or lives, like a social parasite, off the
work of others or exploits or practices socially reprehensible vices.[38]

The Cuban Criminal Code states that the government may
punish “antisocial behavior” through “pre-criminal
measures” (medidas predelectivas), which are preventive measures
applied before a crime is committed.[39]

The law assigns two types of “pre-criminal
measures” for “antisocial behavior.” One is
“re-education,” which is ostensibly carried out in specialized work
or study centers, or in work collectives (colectivos de trabajo),[40]
for a duration of one to four years.[41]
The other is “orientation and control of conduct” by the National
Revolutionary Police, which is applied for the same duration.[42]

The concept of “re-education” contravenes
international standards protecting freedom of thought. And as the
subsequent chapters of this report show, dissidents sentenced under the
“dangerousness” provision are routinely sent not to special work
centers, but to regular prisons, where they are held alongside prisoners
convicted of violent offenses. These individuals are effectively imprisoned for
crimes that were never committed.

All cases of “dangerousness” are to be processed
“summarily,”[43] with
judges determining the duration and type of punishment based on the
person’s level of dangerousness.[44] Judges
may modify the sentence at any time, either on their own initiative or at the
suggestion of the officials responsible for “re-educating” or
“orienting” the individuals sentenced.[45]

The law also states that an individual who is at risk of
being charged with “dangerousness” should receive an official
warning in writing, “to prevent the individual from pursuing socially
dangerous or criminal activities.”[46] Such
warnings are in theory designed to inform individuals why they are at risk of
being charged with “dangerousness” so that they can modify their
behavior. They are also supposed to offer the accused an opportunity to provide
their own account of their behavior, which, according to the law, is supposed
to be included in the written warning.[47]

An individual may even receive an “official
warning” for having ties to people who are considered dangerous. The law
states that as a result of “an individual’s ties or relations with
persons who are potentially dangerous to society ... that individual may become
prone to crime.”[48] By this
reasoning, being connected to someone likely to commit a crime translates into
a kind of “dangerousness” by proximity.

The “dangerousness” law is essentially a status
law—criminalizing individuals for who they are or for a proclivity rather
than for criminal acts. As such, it violates the basic principle that criminal
law should target specific conduct accompanied by the requisite intent.[49]
As the Inter-American Court has ruled, “crimes must be classified and
described in precise and unambiguous language that narrowly defines the
punishable offense.”[50] Human
rights standards and the rule of law require that the law be foreseeable and
predictable, obligating states to define precisely and in a foreseeable manner
all criminal offences.[51] The law
also undermines basic due process and fair trial rights, such as the
presumption of innocence, in that it punishes individuals on the presumption
that they may commit an offense.

Finally, the “dangerousness” law offends against
basic human rights standards, as it seeks to criminalize lawful behavior
protected by human rights law—that is, the exercise of freedom of
opinion, expression, and association, and the right not to be deprived of
liberty and security without due process of law.

Restricting Rights

The Cuban constitution contains a broad range of guarantees
of fundamental rights. Yet it conditions those rights on conformity to the
government and its socialist project.[52]

The constitution pledges "the full freedom and dignity
of men, [and] the enjoyment of their rights..."[53]
These include the freedom of expression and press,[54]
the right to a competent tribunal and legal defense,[55]
the right to assemble, protest, and associate,[56] and
freedom of conscience and religion,[57] among
others.

However, the constitution explicitly states that none of
these rights can be exercised against the state. Article 62 states that:

None of the rights recognized for citizens may be exercised
against that which is established in the Constitution and the laws, nor against
the existence and the ends of the socialist state, nor against the decision of
the Cuban people to construct socialism and communism.[58]

Because the constitution explicitly recognizes the Cuban
Communist Party as “the superior leading force of society and the
State,”[59] by
extension no fundamental freedoms can be exercised if they run contrary to the
Communist Party.

The constitution also deems the failure to subordinate basic
freedoms to the goals of the state “punishable,” according to
article 62, meaning that any judge, prosecutor, or government official who
upholds such rights may him or herself be criminally sanctioned.[60]
And it broadly empowers Cuban citizens to fight against anyone who opposes the
state, granting them the right, “to combat in all forms, including
through armed struggle, when another option is not available, against anyone
who tries to overthrow the political, social, or economic order established by
this Constitution.”[61]

Beyond the ideological conformity and conditionality of
rights created by the provisions detailed above, several constitutional
articles restrict the very rights they claim to ensure. Freedom of speech and
the press, for example, exist ”in accordance with the goals of the
socialist society.”[62] In its
contradictory logic, the constitution claims to ensure free speech and a free
press by mandating that “press, radio, television, films, and other mass
media are state or social property, and may in no instance be the object of
private ownership.”[63]

While Cuba’s constitution also provides that state
officials who commit abuses will face consequences and victims will receive
restitution, in practice authorities do not enforce these rights. The most
vigorous provision on accountability provides that:

Any person who suffers damage or injury wrongfully caused
by State officials or agents, in connection with the discharge of the duties
inherent in their positions, is entitled to demand and obtain the pertinent
reparation or compensation in the manner stipulated by law.[64]

The constitution directs that state officials responsible
for coercing statements “shall incur the penalties established by
law.”[65] Another
provision grants every citizen the right “to address complaints and
petitions to the authorities,” and to receive a response “within a
suitable period of time, according to law.”[66]

Cuba’s utter lack of judicial and prosecutorial
independence ensures that when officials commit abuses, they are not held
accountable by the courts and their actions are not taken into account when considering
the culpability of dissidents.

Denying
Judicial Protection

The Cuban judiciary is not an independent branch of
government, but is subordinate to the legislative branch and ultimately to the
head of state.

Although the Cuban constitution states that judges are
“independent, and owe obedience solely to the law,”[67]
it also explicitly establishes that courts are “subordinated
hierarchically to the National Assembly and the Council of State.”[68]
Furthermore, the Law of the Popular Tribunals (Ley 82 de los Tribunales
Populares) states that the courts “are obligated to comply with...
the instructions of a general nature originating from the Council of
State.”[69] The
Council of State is Cuba’s 31-member executive body, which is presided
over by President Raúl Castro.

The constitution grants the National Assembly of
People’s Power (hereafter, National Assembly)—Cuba’s highest
legislative body—the authority to appoint and dismiss members of the
Supreme Court (Tribunal Supremo Popular), the attorney general, and all
deputy attorneys general.[70] These
judges and prosecutors must report at least once a year to the National
Assembly,[71] which
retains the authority to remove them at any time.[72]
Similarly, judges in Cuba’s municipal and provincial courts are appointed
and are subject to dismissal by municipal and provincial assemblies.[73]
Like the National Assembly, these lower assemblies are empowered to receive
reports from the respective judiciaries and remove judges at any time.[74]
The process by which judges are appointed and removed undermines the security
of tenure, a key element of judicial independence.

The lack of judicial independence in Cuba is inextricably
linked to the lack of legislative independence. In theory, the composition of
the 614 member[75]
National Assembly is determined by direct elections held every five years
through a “free, direct, and secret” vote.[76]
The constitution states that all Cuban citizens over the age of 18 have the
right to be elected to the assembly.[77] But in
reality, the selection of candidates is a highly controlled political process.
A 1992 Electoral Law requires that the number of candidates on the ballot for
the National Assembly equal the number of open positions.[78]
To determine the candidates, a short list is drawn up by a national commission
made up of representatives from all of the major official mass organizations,
such as the Cuban Workers Federation. That short list is then passed along to
another state-run commission, which selects a single candidate for each
position.[79] As a result,
the only way for voters to register dissent is to write in candidates or leave
ballots blank.

Real power in the Cuban government is vested not in the
National Assembly, but in the Council of State, which the constitution calls
“supreme representation of the Cuban State.”[80]
The 31-member council carries out all legislative functions when the assembly
is not in session, which is most of the year.[81] Though
by law the National Assembly elects the Council of State and may override its
decrees,[82] in
practice it is the council that controls the composition and agenda of the
National Assembly, and by extension Cuba’s judiciary. The council can
appoint ministers and other high level officials, issue decrees with the force
of law, declare war, and ratify treaties, among other powers.[83]

The Council of State is headed by a president, who is also
the president of the Council of Ministers, Cuba’s main executive body. It
is a staggering and disproportionate concentration of power in a single
position: this head of state essentially wields power over the executive,
legislative, and judicial branches of government.

Judicial independence is further weakened by the involvement
of lay judges (jueces legos) in proceedings, who serve alongside
professional judges on both the municipal and provincial courts. In these
courts, lay judges occupy two of the three seats on the judges’
panel—a majority.[84] Lay
judges lack the formal legal training of professional judges and are elected by
local assemblies whose composition is completely controlled by the Cuban
Communist Party.[85] The law
states that these judges must “maintain a good attitude before the work
or the activity of social interest which they carry out,” and that they
“possess ... good moral conditions and enjoy high standing in public
opinion,”[86]
qualifications which in the Cuban context are used to ensure ideological
allegiance, and which call into question judges’ impartiality.[87]

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has emphasized
the essential link between judicial independence and democratic rule of law:

The observance of rights and freedoms in a democracy
requires a legal and institutional order in which the laws prevail over the
will of the rulers, and in which there is judicial review of the
constitutionality and legality of the acts of public power, i.e., it
presupposes respect for the rule of law. Judiciaries are established to ensure
compliance with laws; they are clearly the fundamental organs for preventing
the abuse of power and protecting human rights. To fulfill this function, they
must be independent and impartial.[88]

In addition to the Inter-American Charter, other human
rights treaties—including the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights (ICCPR) and the American Convention on Human Rights—require
states to protect the independence and impartiality of the judiciary.[89]
The United Nations Human Rights Committee, the body that monitors the
implementation of the ICCPR, has ruled that for a tribunal to be
“independent and impartial,”[90] the
executive must not be able to control or direct the judiciary,[91]
judges “must not harbor preconceptions about the matter put before them,
and ... must not act in ways that promote the interests of one of the
parties.”[92]

The practical safeguards that this obligation entails are
set forth in a series of “basic principles” on the independence of
the judiciary endorsed by the United Nations General Assembly. These principles
include:

The judiciary shall decide matters before them
impartially, on the basis of facts and in accordance with the law, without
any restrictions, improper influences, inducements, pressures, threats, or
interferences, direct or indirect, from any quarter or for any reason.

Persons selected for judicial office shall be individuals
of integrity and ability with appropriate training or qualifications in
law.

The term of office of judges, their independence,
security, adequate remuneration, conditions of service, pensions, and the
age of retirement shall be adequately secured by law.[93]

As this chapter demonstrates, Cuba has flouted all of these
principles, severely undermining the rights of its citizens.

Denying
External Protections

Cuba is almost entirely closed to human rights monitoring.
It is the only country in the hemisphere that does not allow the International
Committee of the Red Cross access to its prisons. International human rights
organizations, including Human Rights Watch, are prohibited from carrying out
human rights fact-finding missions. Cuba refused to engage in dialogue or allow
a visit from the Personal Representative of the UN High Commissioner for Human
Rights, Christine Chanet, during her mandate from 2002 to 2007.[94]

In several instances Cuba has failed to fulfill its
reporting requirements with the treaty bodies of international human rights
treaties it has ratified. It has not submitted reports to the Committee on the
Rights of the Child since 1995; to the Committee on the Elimination of Racial
Discrimination since 1997; and to Committee against Torture since 1996. It has
also not responded to requests for visits by the UN Special Rapporteur on the
right to freedom of opinion and expression and the UN Special Rapporteur on
freedom of religion, in 2003 and 2006 respectively. It received a visit from
the UN Special Rapporteurs on the right to food (in 2007) and violence against
women (in 1999); and an invitation has been issued to the UN Special Rapporteur
on torture.[95]

Cuba has an obligation to respect, protect, and fulfill the
rights guaranteed under customary international law and numerous international
treaties it has ratified. It also has an obligation to refrain from acts which
would defeat the object and purpose of treaties, or take regressive measures
with respect to rights protected by them, which it has signed pending
ratification.

The core provisions of Universal Declaration of Human Rights
(UDHR) are broadly recognized as customary international law and an
authoritative interpretation of the human rights provisions in the UN Charter.
Cuba has repeatedly stated that its domestic laws respect the rights contained
in the UDHR.[96]

In addition, Cuba has ratified several key international
human rights treaties, which impose on it the obligation to comply with the
treaties’ provisions and incorporate their protections into domestic
legislation.[97] Cuba
signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) in
February 2008. As a result, according to the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties,
Cuba is obliged to
refrain from acts that would defeat the object and purpose of the two covenants
until they come into force.[98]The Cuban government has also publicly asserted its compliance
with the provisions of the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the
Treatment of Prisoners.[99]

Despite Cuba’s ratification or signing of key
treaties, and its stated willingness to abide by international standards
including those set out in the UDHR, Cuban laws, institutions, and practices
continue to directly contravene the human rights of the Cuban people.

V.
Political Prisoners

During the nearly five decades of Fidel Castro’s rule,
Cuba repressed virtually all forms of dissent using a wide range of abusive
tactics, including imprisonment. While the denial of fundamental freedoms
throughout that time was unrelenting, Fidel Castro’s rule was also marked
by periods of heightened repression, such as the 2003 crackdown on 75 human
rights defenders, journalists, trade unionists, and other critics of the
government. Accused of being “mercenaries” of the US government,
the individuals were summarily tried in closed hearings. Fifty-three of those
75 prisoners continue to languish in Cuba’s prisons under Raúl
Castro.

Since taking over for his brother in July 2006, Raúl
Castro has added scores of additional political prisoners to the hundreds of
dissidents in Cuba’s abusive prisons. To sentence these individuals, Raúl
Castro’s government has relied on many of the same laws that were used
routinely during Fidel Castro’s rule, including those punishing contempt
and insubordination. In addition, Raúl Castro has increasingly relied on
the law criminalizing “dangerousness.”

Human Rights Watch has documented more than 40 cases of
dissidents who have been sentenced for “dangerousness” under Raúl
Castro. We believe there are many more. In particular, the Cuban government has
relied heavily on language in the provision that classifies unemployment as a
form of “antisocial behavior.” In a classic catch-22, critics of
the government are denied work because of their political beliefs, and then
imprisoned for not having work. Raúl Castro’s government not only
applies the “dangerousness” provision to dissidents, but to all
Cubans who are unemployed or illegally self-employed—demonstrating the
extent to which any form of noncooperation with the Cuban government is a
punishable offense.

Repression under Fidel Castro

Fidel Castro came to power in 1959 after leading a
revolution that toppled the government of Fulgencio Batista and ruled by decree
until 1976, when a new constitution—one whose drafting he
oversaw—reformed the structure of the government. From that time until he
transferred power to Raúl Castro in July 2006, Fidel Castro held all
three of the most powerful positions in Cuba’s government: president of
the Council of State, president of the Council of Ministers, and first
secretary of the Cuban Communist Party.

Under Fidel Castro, Cuba repressed virtually all forms of
dissent. His government used a wide range of abusive tactics to enforce
political conformity, including long-term imprisonment, beatings, threats, and
surveillance.[100] The
repression was codified in law, carried out by security forces and groups of
civilian sympathizers tied to the state, and prosecuted by a judiciary that
lacked independence. As a result, thousands of Cubans were incarcerated in
abysmal prisons, thousands more were harassed and intimidated, and entire
generations were denied basic rights.

While the denial of fundamental freedoms during Fidel
Castro’s rule was unrelenting, the Cuban government carried out periodic
waves of heightened repression, marked by an increase in arbitrary arrests of
dissenters. One such wave was in March 2003.

2003 Crackdown

In March 2003, the Cuban government arrested 75 peaceful
dissidents across the island in a widespread crackdown. Those detained included
journalists, human rights defenders, members of unauthorized (and thus illegal)
political groups and labor unions, and other activists drawn from all fourteen
of Cuba’s provinces.[101] All 75
were tried and convicted in summary hearings. None were acquitted. They were
sentenced to six to twenty-eight years in prison, with an average sentence of 19
years.[102]

The raids took place in the context of rising tension
between the United States and Cuba, and a bold public campaign by citizens
within Cuba challenging their system of government. In 1996, the US Congress
passed the Helms-Burton Act, an act to “plan for support of
transition” of the Cuban government, which further tightened the
decades-long embargo on Cuba. Cuba responded in 1999 by passing the Law for the
Protection of Cuban National Independence and the Economy (the National
Protection Law), which punishes any act that “supports, facilitates, or
collaborates with the objective of the Helms-Burton Act, the blockade and the
economic war against our people.”[103]

The administration of George W. Bush hardened its policy
toward Cuba in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United
States. In a May 2002 lecture, then US Under Secretary of State for Arms
Control and International Security John Bolton said that the United States
believed Cuba had “at least a limited offensive biological warfare
research-and-development effort” and had provided the technology to
“rogue states.”[104] These
comments carried significant weight in the aftermath of the 9-11 attacks, when
US national security strategy embraced the use of preemptive force to protect
the United States against imminent threats[105]—a
justification used in the invasion of Iraq.[106]
And in September 2002, newly-appointed chief of the US Interests Section,[107]
James Cason, arrived in Havana, adopting a more aggressive stance toward the
Cuban government. Cason organized workshops and meetings for dissidents at the
Interests Section, traveled across the island meeting with critics of the
government (often distributing free books and shortwave radios), and offered
more outspoken criticism of Cuba’s human rights record than his
predecessors.[108]

Meanwhile, within Cuba, a broad-based campaign fostered the
public expression of dissent toward the Castro government. Founded in 1998 by
political activist Oswaldo Payá, the Varela Project aimed to promote
reflection on the political system and collect signatures from Cuban citizens
calling for democratic reform, respect for human rights, freedom for all
political prisoners, and private enterprise, among other reforms.[109]
The project made use of an article in the Cuban constitution which states that
if more than 10,000 voters support a proposition, it should be put to a
referendum.[110] The
organizers submitted more than 11,000 signatures to the National Assembly in
May 2002. The Cuban government responded by organizing a national referendum of
its own in June 2002, which declared the state’s socialist system
“irrevocable,”[111]
allegedly with 99 percent of Cubans in favor.[112]
Although the referendum called for by the Varela Project was not held, its
organizers continued to hold meetings and gather signatures.

In the massive crackdown of 2003, nearly all of the 75
individuals arrested had participated in the Varela Project. In a press
conference following their trials, Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez
Roque said:

The Varela Project is part of a strategy of subversion
against Cuba that has been conceived, financed, and directed from abroad with
the active participation of the US Interests Section in Havana. It is part of
the same subversive design and has no basis whatsoever in Cuban law. It is a
crude manipulation of Cuba’s laws and constitution.[113]

Of the 75 people arrested, 35 were charged under the
National Protection Law, marking the first time it had been used to punish
dissent. The rest of the 75 were charged with violating article 91 of the
Criminal Code, which broadly punishes any act against the independence or
territorial integrity of the state.[114]

Cuban authorities justified the imprisonment of the 75 by
claiming that they acted as “mercenaries” in the pay of the US
government. In an April 9, 2003 press conference following the summary trials
of the 75, Pérez Roque said the arrests had been precipitated by the
aggressive US policy aimed at toppling the Castro government. He accused the
individuals of receiving funds and materials from the US government; having contact
with organizations and individuals actively opposed to the Cuban government, in
particular the US Interests Section and Cuban exile groups in the United
States; and producing “distorted” information that supported the US
embargo.[115]

As evidence of such “mercenary” activities,
Pérez Roque pointed to funding that the Cubans had received from
organizations funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID),
Cuban exile groups, or other foreign sources such as news organizations. For
example, Pérez Roque cited the fact that journalist Oscar Espinosa Chepe
had received US$7,154 from CubaNet—a website that received funding from
USAID—as evidence of his working for the US government.[116]
Chepe’s sentencing documents accused him of writing articles and
providing “distorted and falsified” information about the Cuban
government to “subversive and counterrevolutionary magazines.”[117]
Similarly, Pérez Roque accused Alfonso Valdés, president of the
unofficial Liberal Democratic Party, of receiving US$400 from Cuban Democratic
Action, a Miami-based organization that also received USAID funding.
Pérez Roque also noted other evidence of “mercenary”
activities, such as Oscar Elías Biscet and Héctor Palacios Ruiz
possessing open access passes to the US Interests Section in Havana.

Cuba has the right to protect national security by
regulating and setting restrictions on certain civil society activity,
including regulating funding. Yet in order to comply with protections under
international law, any regulation must be proportionate, necessary for
democratic society, and must pursue a legitimate aim. Cuba’s punishment
of the dissidents’ non-violent activities did not fall within these
parameters. The crackdown contravened their rights to opinion and expression,
peaceful assembly and association, and political participation. It also flouted
the principles set out in the 1998 UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders
that “everyone has the right, individually and in association with
others, to solicit, receive and utilize resources for the express purpose of
promoting and protecting human rights and fundamental freedoms through peaceful
means.”[118] While
the Cuban government claimed dissidents acted as agents of the United States,
the evidence provided by Pérez Roque and reported in trial documents do
not substantiate the allegation.

Several respected international and regional bodies and
experts have concurred that the sentencing of the 75 prisoners was unjust and
that they should be released. These include the Inter-American Commission for
Human Rights, which found that the Cuban government had violated their rights
to life, liberty, and personal security; equality before the law; freedom of
opinion, expression, and dissemination; a fair trial; assembly and association;
and due process of law, among others.[119]
The Commission called for the immediate release of the prisoners and the repeal
of the National Protection Law and article 91, as well as reform of
Cuba’s constitution to ensure judicial independence. The UN Working Group
on Arbitrary Detention found that those arrested in the 2003 crackdown were
arbitrarily detained,[120]
concluding that:

Independently of whether domestic law has or has not been
respected, the Working Group considers that the legislation applied contravened
the provisions of articles 19, 20 and 21 of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, in that it limits the free exercise of the rights of opinion and
expression, not to be harassed for holding opinions, to research and receive
information and opinions, and to disseminate them, without limitation by
national borders, by any means of expression, as well as the right of peaceful
assembly and association and the right to participate directly in the
government of the country.[121]

In addition, the former UN Commission on
Human Rights issued a resolution in 2004 condemning the crackdown, stating:

...the Government of Cuba, like those of
all other sovereign States, irrespective of the current exceptional
international circumstances which have obliged many States to step up security
measures, should refrain from adopting measures which could jeopardize the
fundamental rights, the freedom of expression and the
right to due process of its citizens, and in that regard, deplores the events
which occurred [during March and April 2003] in Cuba involving verdicts
pronounced against certain political dissidents and journalists.[122]

The European Union Council also called for the immediate
release of the prisoners.[123]

Fifty-three of the prisoners sentenced in 2003 remain in
prison under Raúl Castro, where they continue to endure cruel, inhuman,
and degrading treatment in Cuba’s prisons (a full list of the 53 and
their sentences can be found in the appendix). Those prisoners who have been
released have been freed on parole (licensia extrapenal), rather than
being released unconditionally, which leaves them vulnerable to being returned
to prison to serve out their sentences at any time.

The 53 come from varied professions and have participated in
a range of unofficial civil society groups throughout Cuba. Cases of
dissidents who remain incarcerated include journalists, such as Víctor Rolando
Arroyo Carmona, who directed the unofficial Union of Independent Cuban
Journalists and Writers,[124] and
Juan Adolfo Fernández Sainz, a journalist from Havana.[125]
Both published articles in foreign outlets that documented abuses by the Cuban
government, and since their incarceration have reportedly been subjected to
solitary confinement. They each have participated in hunger strikes to protest
the conditions of their imprisonment.[126]

Human rights defenders also remain in prison for their
criticism of the government, including Havana doctor Marcelo Cano
Rodríguez, a member of the unrecognized human rights group, the Cuban
Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation (Comisión Cubana de Derechos
Humanos y Reconciliación
Nacional or CCDHRN), who was sentenced to 18 years in prison under article
91 and the National Protection Law.[127] In the
case against him, prosecutors emphasized that Rodríguez visited prisoners
and their families on behalf of the CCDHRN and maintained ties with the
international organization Doctors without Borders.[128]Fidel Suárez Cruz, a farmer and member of the Pro Human Rights Party
in Pinar del Río, was sentenced to 20 years under the National
Protection Law.[129]
As a human rights activist and manager of a private library, Suárez wasoutspoken in his criticism of government authorities.[130]
In November 2005, Suárez was reportedly transferred to a closed cell
measuring one square meter.[131]Dr.
Alfredo Pulido López, a dentist from Camagüey who was stripped of
his job in 1998 for participating in an unofficial religious group, was
sentenced to 14 years under article 91.[132] Pulido
was accused of calling international attention to human rights abuses.[133]
During his incarceration, his wife said, Pulido has been beaten and forcibly
paraded naked through the prison by guards. His health has deteriorated so
significantly that, at 49 years old, he can hardly walk.[134]

Cubans who tried to organize alternative labor groups
outside of the state-run Workers’ Central of Cuba (CTC) also continue to
serve lengthy prison sentences. They include Nelson Molinet Espino, who led the
unofficial Cuban Confederation of Democratic Workers, sentenced to 20 years
under article 91.[135] Prior
to his arrest, Molinet had been constantly harassed for his trade union
activities, and his 2003 sentence notes that he published articles about labor
abuses in the international press.[136] Lester
Gonzales Pentón, who was the Santa Clara delegate for the same labor
confederation, was also sentenced to 20 years in prison.[137]
Despite being the youngest of the 75 individuals arrested in March 2003,
Pentón’s health severely worsened in prison.[138]

Members of a diverse range of unauthorized civil society
groups critical of the regime were also arrested in 2003 and remain in prison.
They include Efren Fernández Fernández, secretary of the
Christian Liberation Movement and principal leader of Varela Project in Havana,
who was sentenced to 12 years under article 91 of the penal code.[139]
Brothers Ariel and Guido Sigler Amaya, founders of the unofficial Independent
Alternative Option Movement in Matanzas (Movimiento Independiente
Opción Alternativa), were sentenced to 20 years under the National
Protection Law.[140] Before
their arrests, the Sigler brothers were harassed, subjected to numerous acts of
public repudiation, and threatened for their nonviolent activities. Having been
moved between at least four different prisons and two military hospitals, at 47
years old Arielcan no longer walk and is confined to a wheelchair.[141]

Repression under Raúl Castro

Since taking over in July 2006, Raúl Castro’s
government has continued to lock up dissidents using many of the same laws
employed during Fidel Castro’s rule. These include laws criminalizing
contempt, association, disobedience, resistance, and attacks on public
officials. The Raúl Castro government has also increasingly relied on a
“dangerousness” provision to imprison individuals who have not
committed any crime. This provision has been applied both to dissenters and to
ordinary Cubans who are unemployed or illegally self-employed.

Applying the “Dangerousness” Provision

In researching this report, Human Rights Watch documented
more than 40 cases of dissidents sentenced under the
“dangerousness” law by Raúl Castro’s government.
Scores more report receiving official warnings that exercising their
fundamental rights constitutes a form of “dangerous” behavior.

The cases are spread across
Cuba’s 14 provinces and affect individuals from a range of professions.
Some belong to unofficial organizations, such as unions and youth groups, while
others are unaffiliated. They include journalists, members of religious groups,
doctors, students, and human rights defenders. The group includes individuals
such as a bicycle taxi-driver who attempted to organize his fellow bicitaxistas
into an independent union; a journalist who created an independent press
agency; and a human rights advocate who tried to walk across Cuba to call
attention to abuses and political prisoners.

The indictment of political activist Digzan Saavedra Prat
offers insight into the kinds of activities that the state considers dangerous.
A member of an unofficial human rights group in Banes, Holguín province,
Saavedra collected information about abuses and attended unsanctioned
gatherings. His indictment accused him of, among other forms of
“antisocial behavior”:

being tied to persons of bad moral and social conduct,
thinking he is handsome, ...demonstrating against the revolutionary process and
people belonging to political organizations that live in his area of residence.
He has been cited in four official warnings and two educational letters... setting
a bad example for the new generation.[142]

Saavedra said the prosecutor presented no witnesses,
“official warnings,” or any other evidence during his closed,
summary trial in January 2008. When Saavedra told his defense lawyer that his
rights were being violated, his lawyer told him that unless he wanted to receive
a harsher sentence, it was better not to speak of rights in court. Saavedra was
sentenced to a year of “re-education” and was immediately taken to
prison.[143]

Targeting the Unemployed and Illegally Self-Employed

The Cuban government also applies the “dangerousness”
provision to non-dissidents who are unemployed or illegally self-employed.
Under the “dangerousness” provision, those who “live, like a
social parasite, off the work of others” are engaging in a form of
“antisocial behavior,” and may be punished.[144]
The imprisonment of individuals because they do not take part in the
state-controlled labor system shows that any form of non-cooperation with the
Cuban government may be viewed as dangerous behavior.

Self-employment (cuentapropismo) is strictly
regulated by the Cuban government, and permission to run a private business is
granted on a case-by-case basis.[145] To operate or work for
a business without government authorization is illegal.

Non-dissidents and dissidents alike told Human Rights Watch
that it was difficult to survive on wages from a full-time official job and
government rations. The workers we spoke with said that monthly wages ranged
from 250 to 400 Cuban pesos, or US$9.50 to $15.20. Enyor Díaz Allen said
a month’s wages were not enough to buy a pair of shoes. Rafael Meneses
Cuco said he could not afford a toothbrush. “Gerardo
Domínguez” said that without finding a second form of income, he
and his retired mother would not have enough to eat.[146]

In 2008, natural and man-made disasters deepened the economic
hardship experienced by most Cubans. A series of three devastating hurricanes
struck the island, causing approximately US$10 billion worth of damage, and the
global financial crisis dramatically slowed Cuba’s economic growth.[147]
In response, the Cuban government introduced a set of austerity measures in
2009, such as a 50 percent reduction in lunch portions at workplaces, which
affected all Cubans.[148]
Meanwhile, sanctions from the decades-long US embargo continue to hurt all
sectors of the Cuban population.

In the face of such economic hardship, some Cubans said they
had chosen to work in unofficial businesses because, in spite of the risk, they
were able to earn better wages. Others said they chose not to take government
jobs because they were not interested in the work they were offered, which was
often in construction or agricultural labor. Human rights defenders and
journalists in Havana, Sancti Spíritus, Holguín, Santiago, and
Guantanamo said that Cubans who were unemployed or illegally self-employed were
routinely prosecuted for “dangerousness.”

“Gerardo Domínguez,” a 28-year-old in
Havana who does not belong to any unofficial political groups or movement, told
Human Rights Watch that more than ten of his friends had been warned or
imprisoned for not working, or for operating unauthorized side businesses. One
of his friends was caught selling car parts without official permission in
2008, and was charged with “dangerousness.”[149]
“Michel Labrada,” another Havana resident, said police went door to
door in his neighborhood in June 2009, creating a list by household of who was
employed and who was not. The unemployed were given a short-term work
assignment, and told that they would receive a warning for “antisocial
behavior” if they did not report to work.[150]
According to human rights defender Ana Margarita Perdigón Brito,
“Luis Acosta,” a resident of Sancti Spíritus who could not
work because of spinal injuries, chronic asthma, and other ailments, was
sentenced to two years for “dangerousness” for being unemployed.
Acosta said that his ailments and the fact he received disability support from
the government were not taken into account during his closed, summary trial.[151]
Gabriel Díaz Sánchez, a human rights defender, described an
identical effort in Bayamó, Granma province, at the beginning of 2009.
He said that while the government was carrying out a household census,
officials also asked who was unemployed, and assigned them new jobs.
Those who did not report to their new jobs, Díaz said, were brought
before the courts and charged with “dangerousness.”[152]

The government launched a campaign targeting the unemployed
in eastern Cuba in 2009 called Operation Victory (Operación Victoria).
According to several human rights defenders in Guantanamo province, the campaign
consisted of issuing official warnings to the unemployed, especially young
people, and subjecting them to police surveillance. Those who did not find a
job within a few weeks of their warnings were sentenced for
“dangerousness.”[153]
Beginning in January 2009, news of the operation was broadcast on official
state TV and radio stations and disseminated during meetings of the
“committees for the defense of the revolution” (comités
de defensa de la revolución,or CDRs),[154]
according to five sources in the region.

Approximately 80 people, most of them youths, were given
official warnings in Guantanamo for being unemployed on January 12, 2009,
according to journalist LuísFelipe Rojas, who reported on the
operation. Rojas was only able to publish his articles about the
operation—like all of his work containing criticism of the actions of the
Cuban government—on websites based outside of Cuba, especially
CubaEncuentro. According to Rojas, those who received warnings were told that
they had 15 days to find work before facing charges in court.[155]
Rojas told Human Rights Watch that 35 of the 80 were charged in February 2009
with “dangerousness,” and given sentences ranging from a year of
forced labor to four years in jail. He said Operation Victory “had as its
objective to grab people who do not work, but they ended up grabbing people who
were self-employed in order to survive, reselling objects, doing manual labor,
filling tires, mobile vendors, and so forth.”[156]

In addition to punishing those who are unemployed, the government
has also launched a propaganda campaign to cast people without jobs as social
parasites, and to stoke collective resentment against those who operate
unauthorized businesses.

In March 2009, a young man referred to as
“Gustavo” in an article in Granma, the official government
newspaper, was tried for “dangerousness” before an audience of
onlookers in a public park in Las Tunas. According to the article, the event
was “called to elevate the judicial culture and the conscience of the
population.”[157] Gustavo
was charged with operating an illegal currency exchange[158]
and, the article reported, the disdain of the community was displayed in the
“facial expressions which mix worry with rejection of improper attitudes
when it is youths who are the ‘sad protagonists’ of such
distortions.”[159] The
article closed with a call for self-reflection and a change in behavior by the
public:

Hopefully the discomfort reflected in [Gustavo’s]
expression is embarrassment, repentance, gratitude for the skilful defense by
the lawyer.... Hopefully the repercussions of this and other cases evaluated
for their degree of dangerousness will lead all of us (“crooked and
straight,” family and community, institutions and society) to determine
to be more preventive and inflexible when confronted with such wrongs and to do
a better job in what each of us is supposed to do.

People we spoke with in other provinces said “dangerousness”
trials like Gustavo’s were broadcast on state television to provide
warnings to the public.

The Catch-22: Unemployed
Dissidents and “Dangerousness”

Under Raúl Castro’s government, dissidents are
routinely denied work due to their political opinions. Because anyone who is
unemployed may be accused of “living off of the work of others” and
thus guilty of “antisocial behavior,” the
“dangerousness” provision provides a tailor-made system for
punishing dissent. Dissidents cannot get jobs because they are considered
dangerous, and they are considered dangerous because they do not have jobs.

As Ana Margarita Perdigón Brito, a human rights
defender in Sancti Spíritus and sister of a journalist sentenced for “dangerousness,”
explained the catch-22: “My brother worked for the government and they
let him go for not being trustworthy, for being a human rights defender. No
one would employ him and then, when they charged him, they prosecuted him because
they said he was not working.”[160] Her
brother Raymundo Perdigón Brito was sentenced to four years in prison
for “dangerousness” in December 2006.

Alexander Santos Hernández, a member of the
unofficial Cuban Liberal Movement in Holguín, was fired in 2005 from his
job as a martial arts instructor. When he went to the State employment center
to seek a new job, he said, a government official told him, “worms don’t
deserve employment.” After months of unsuccessfully applying for jobs, he
was sentenced to four years for “dangerousness” in 2006. The
primary argument of the state prosecutor in his trial, Santos said, was that he
was unemployed.[161]

Hugo Damián Prieto Blanco, a political activist who
gathered signatures for the Varela Project, was granted parole in February 2008
after completing three-and-a-half years of a four year sentence for
“dangerousness.” But according to his wife, once released, he could
not find a job. One employer after another told him he was not
“suitable” or “trustworthy,” or that they did not hire
“counterrevolutionaries.” His conditional freedom was revoked in
August 2008 on the grounds that he was unemployed, and he was sent back to
prison, where he served out the rest of his sentence until May 2009. “In
court, the judge told us that he couldn’t find work,” said his
wife. “But the thing is that they won’t employ him.”[162]

As noted at the start of this report, Ramón
Velásquez Toranzo was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment for
“dangerousness” in January 2007 for attempting to march across Cuba
to call attention to human rights. According to his daughter, the primary
argument presented by the state prosecutor in his trial was that he was
unemployed. The government said it had sent three official warnings to
Velásquez’s home in the weeks preceding his arrest, informing him
that his joblessness constituted “antisocial behavior.” But he had
not been home to receive the warnings because he was on his march.[163]

Other Forms of Criminalizing Dissent

In addition to the “dangerousness” law, Raúl
Castro’s government has employed many of the same laws criminalizing
dissent as were used during Fidel Castro’s rule. Relevant cases include
those of Rigoberto Zamora Rodríguez and Yoandri Gutiérrez Vargas,
each sentenced to two years in prison for acting in contempt of the head of
state (desacato al jefe de estado) for chanting anti-government slogans
in public in Bayamo, Granma province, in January 2008.[164]
The prosecutor’s indictment, a copy of which was obtained by Human Rights
Watch, said that two ex-members of “counterrevolutionary groups”
had “demonstrated against our revolutionary process” in the street.
Zamora and Gutiérrez, it went on, had encouraged people:

not to take part in the unified vote that strengthens our
political and social system, and used offensive phrases directed against the
character of our Commander in Chief, among which were “this old man is
killing us with hunger,” “down with Fidel,” “down with the
old,” “down with communism”....[165]

The indictment also noted that Zamora was unemployed,
“does not perform socially useful activity,” and “associates
with counterrevolutionary persons”; and that Gutiérrez, in
addition to being unemployed and linked to counterrevolutionaries, “does
not belong to any organization of the masses.”[166]

Enyor Díaz Allen, member of the unauthorized
political group Youth for Democracy (Jóvenes por la Democracia)
in Guantanamo, was sentenced to a year in prison for contempt (desacato)
in March 2009 when he participated in a small protest criticizing the
government and demanding respect for human rights.[167]
Authorities had detained Díaz three times before his arrest for
participating in peaceful activities and had warned him that he would be
imprisoned if he did not change his behavior. Pro-democracy activist Maikel
Bencomo Rojas said he was repeatedly harassed by security officials because he
had a tattoo on his back that read “Down with Fidel.” He was
arrested on his way to an unauthorized meeting in Havana and was sentenced to
two years of imprisonment in February 2008. He was charged with carrying out an
attack on authority (atentado) and contempt.[168]
In another case, Alejandro Jiménez Blanco was charged with resisting
authority (resistencia) for having yelled anti-government and
pro-democracy slogans in a public park in Guantanamo in March 2009; he was
sentenced to two years in prison.[169]

VI.
Due Process Violations

Cuba systematically violates the due process rights of
dissenters from the moment they are arrested through their sham trials. Prior
to their trials, political detainees[170] are
routinely denied access to legal counsel and family visits, often meeting their
attorneys just minutes before their hearings. Political detainees are also
routinely held in inhumane and dangerous conditions, and are subjected to
abusive interrogations. Neither detainees nor their families are adequately
informed about the charges against them, and detainees may languish for months
or years in prison without ever being formally tried for a crime. This system
of due process violations, entrenched during the rule of Fidel Castro, remains
active under Raúl Castro.

Nearly all trials of political detainees are closed hearings
lasting less than an hour. During trials, judges and prosecutors impede
dissidents’ right to a fair trial by arbitrary actions such as falsifying
evidence and denying defendants the right to speak in their defense. Political
prisoners who are granted parole may have their conditional freedom revoked any
time they are deemed to have engaged in “counterrevolutionary”
activities. Human Rights Watch was unable to document a single case under the Raúl
Castro government where a court acquitted a political
detainee.

Failure
to Provide Information to Detainees and Families

Cuban law dictates that, upon arresting someone, authorities
are immediately supposed produce a written act documenting the time, date, and
motive for the arrest, signed by the relevant officer and the detainee.[171]
The law also stipulates that police should inform the detainee’s family
of the arrest and facilitate contact between the detainee and his or her
family.[172]
Prosecutorial investigators (instructores) are required to inform
detainees of why they are being detained and the charges against them.[173]

Yet from the time of their arrest through pre-trial
detention period, dissidents say, authorities fail to inform them of the reason
for their confinement. When political activist William Reyes Mir was arrested
and taken to a police station in September 2007, he asked several times why he
had been detained, but officers ignored him. According to Reyes, “They
detained me for five days of punishment without telling me why I was there, nor
what they were going to do to me.”[174]

Families are routinely kept in the dark regarding the
imprisonment of relatives who are political detainees. In dozens of cases
investigated by Human Rights Watch, authorities prohibited dissidents from
contacting family members after their arrest, and failed to notify families
that their relatives had been detained. We documented a half-dozen cases in
which authorities withheld information from inquiring relatives or even
deliberately misled them by providing false information regarding
detainees’ whereabouts and legal status.

A member of an unofficial pro-democratic political party,
“Jorge Barrera Alonso” was detained in 2006 while handing out
copies of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. As recounted above, when
his wife heard from his friend that he had been detained, she went to various
police stations to find out where he was being held. Every station denied
having Barrera in custody and claimed to have no information regarding his
arrest. It was not until several days later, after Barrera’s wife had
filed a formal complaint at a government office, that she received a call from
an officer at one of the stations she had visited acknowledging that they were
detaining her husband.[175]

Restrictions
of Family Visits

Even when families determine where a loved one is being
held, they are routinely denied the opportunity to visit him or her before
trial, or only allowed to meet for extremely short periods of time.
International law states that authorities should allow detainees to receive
visits from family members while in detention.[176]
Former detainees and their relatives also told Human Rights Watch that, when
allowed, short visits were openly monitored by guards, who prohibited any
discussion of the detainee’s arrest, trial, or any issue of a political
nature.

Juan Luís Rodríguez Desdín, who was
arrested in July 2006, said he had no contact with his family in the week
between his arrest and his trial. A human rights defender and member of an
unofficial political group, Rodríguez was later charged with
“dangerousness.”[177]
Authorities did not allow Gertrudis Ojeda Suave to receive visits from her
mother or daughter during the eight days between her arrest and the trial in
2002. Also charged with “dangerousness,” she said the time apart
had been especially traumatizing for her three-year-old daughter.[178]

Rufina Velásquez González was allowed to visit
her father—who had been arrested while marching peacefully across Cuba to
demand respect for human rights—in the days before his trial in January
2007. But she said when they began to discuss the reason for his arrest, guards
intervened. According to Velásquez, “They cut off our conversation
because we were talking about what constitutes injustice. And then they pulled
me by the arm and took me out. They said, ‘The visit is over. You
can’t be talking about these things with your father.’” When
she tried to visit her father days later, she was turned away without
explanation.[179]

Lack
of Access to Legal Counsel

The Cuban constitution states that citizens have the right
to a defense,[180] and
the Criminal Procedural Law grants detainees the right to meet privately with
their attorneys.[181] Yet in
practice, political detainees are systematically denied the chance to meet
confidentially with defense lawyers during pre-trial detention.

Dozens of former political prisoners and family members of
current prisoners told Human Rights Watch that detainees are not allowed to
meet with their lawyers until the day of their trials, when they are given just
a few minutes to introduce themselves. In the rare instances when political
detainees are allowed to meet with their lawyers during pre-trial detention,
the visits are limited to a few minutes and monitored by guards, infringing on
defendants’ right to confidential meetings with their legal counsel.[182]
Lawyers’ lack of access to their clients significantly hinders their
ability to prepare an adequate legal defense.

Across Cuba, human rights defenders report a pattern of
systematic denial of access to their legal counsel. When Juan Luís Rodríguez Desdín
was arrested in July 2006, his wife quickly contracted a lawyer to defend him.
But the lawyer was not allowed to visit Rodríguez before his trial, he
said, and the state prosecutor would not inform the lawyer with what crime he
would be charged. Rodríguez did not meet his lawyer until the day of his
trial.[183] In the
ten days between when he was arrested and brought to trial in January 2008,
political and human rights activist Eduardo Pacheco Ortízwas not
allowed to meet with a lawyer, despite repeated requests to do so.[184]

State prosecutors provide additional obstacles by obscuring
or withholding information regarding the charges and evidence against
detainees, and by giving minimal notice as to the timing of pending trials.
This obfuscation is permitted by the Criminal Procedural Law, which allows
prosecutors to withhold charges and evidence from the defense in exceptional
circumstances “for reasons of state security.”[185]
As detailed below, this disparity in information sets the stage for an imbalanced
trial.

Family members of political detainees often have a difficult
time finding lawyers to take on their cases, either because of the risk lawyers
perceive in defending persons branded as “counterrevolutionaries,”
or because lawyers see the outcome of such cases as predetermined and thus not
worth contesting.

Human Rights Watch documented three cases in which state
officials reportedly advised defense lawyers not to take on cases of dissidents.
The lawyer defending Nelson Curbelo Rodríguez, a member of an unofficial
political group, was warned by a state prosecutor before the trial not to take
Curbelo’s case, according to a human rights defender who spoke with the
lawyer. “Do you know who you are going to defend?" a prosecutor
reportedly asked Curbelo's lawyer. "This guy is a dissident. Be careful of
getting involved with dissidents.”[186]

I talked to a lawyer who refused to represent Oscar because
he knew that all the sentences had already been decided and said he was not
going to waste his time performing an act of theater.... Two defense lawyers
[were] talking nearby. I heard them say, “Can you imagine? They made me
defend this guy, a dissident. Why would I get myself into trouble for
that?”[187]

Forced
Interrogations

Political detainees also are subjected to forced
interrogations by state security officers. This practice directly violates
Cuban law, which explicitly states: “Neither violence nor coercion of any
sort will be used to force people to testify.”[188]

Former political detainees held at many different detention
facilities told Human Rights Watch that interrogation sessions were aimed at
eliciting confessions and collecting information about dissident activities.
They said that security officers repeatedly threatened them with harsher
sentences if they did not confess and used tactics including sleep deprivation,
solitary confinement, abrupt changes in temperature, and incessant bright
lights and loud music.

Raymundo Perdigón Brito—a journalist who was
arrested in Sancti Spíritus in November 2006 and charged with
“dangerousness”—was held for over a week before his trial.
According to his sister, whom he later told of his experience:

During these days he found himself detained in punishment
cells, where there exist methods to soften prisoners. He left very confused,
wasting away mentally. They used various psychological methods to torment and
intimidate him there. They would wake him up at any hour, they would turn on
the water at three or four in the morning, they would interrogate him in total
darkness. They accused him falsely, and told him that he would receive a longer
sentence than the one he had.[189]

Pedro Pablo Álvarez Ramos—a trade unionist who
tried to form an alternative to the official government union—described
similar tactics by authorities during his pre-trial detention in Havana. For
nearly five weeks, he said, he was moved back and forth between a small cell he
shared with prisoners convicted of violent crimes and a solitary confinement
cell. Bright lights in solitary confinement were left on 24 hours a day, and he
was subjected to repeated interrogations:

It was harsh, aggressive, threatening. They told me that
they were seeking a life sentence, a firing squad. They called me a traitor,
trying to suggest that we were actually agents of the [US] empire. It was a
grotesque and very intense thing. They call you to do an interrogation at two
in the morning. You lose track of time when it isn’t mealtime. You live
in great psychological tension.... Always with the threatening attitude:
“you are going to rot in jail.”[190]

Abusive
Pre-Trial Detention Conditions

Political detainees are subjected to abusive detention conditions
prior to their trials. Among other abuses, political detainees are routinely
given insufficient and contaminated food and water; deprived of bedding and the
facilities needed to maintain basic hygiene; and denied medical attention in
cases of need. These conditions violate international law.[191]
International law also requires that untried detainees be kept in separate
facilities from convicted prisoners.[192] As
already noted, Human Rights Watch found that Cuba consistently violates this
provision, forcing political detainees to share overcrowded cells with persons
convicted of violent offenses.

“Juan Alfonso,” a member of an unrecognized pro-democracy
group, was detained in Holguín in October 2008. He said he was taken to
a police station and placed in a cell with two convicted prisoners that was
barely large enough to accommodate the three men lying down. He was not
provided with a mattress or a blanket, and spent his nights sleeping on the
exposed cement floor. The only water he had access to dripped from a small tap
protruding from one of the cell walls. He and other prisoners shared a single
container to eat, drink, and wash themselves. In the center of the cell was an
uncovered squat toilet, which filled the small, poorly ventilated space with a
nauseating smell. Authorities did not allow Alfonso to go outside during his
four days of pre-trial detention, during which he said he contracted a staph
infection in his genitals from the unhygienic conditions. Neither his family
nor a lawyer was allowed to visit him.[193]

Manuel Vázquez Portal, an independent journalist who
was arrested in the March 2003 crackdown, described his pre-trial detention as
follows:

They locked me in a cell that was one-and-a-half meters by two meters with
three other detainees. It is torture to be with three men in a cell meant for
one person, with the light on 24 hours a day. It has a steel door that
makes a terrible noise when it is opened and closed, and they slam the door
constantly to prevent you from sleeping at night or during the day. In the cell
it is very hot and when they transfer you to the interrogation office the
temperature is much lower and it is very cold.... They interrogated me four
times in private offices of the Political Police. From the moment you arrive
they treat you as though you’re guilty.[194]

Indefinite
Detention

Some political detainees may be held for years without ever
being charged with a crime, languishing in a pre-trial investigatory phase that
can be extended indefinitely. Cuba’s Criminal Procedural Law states that
the period of investigation to prepare criminal charges should not exceed 60
days, but may be extended to a “maximum term” of six months.
However, the law leaves a loophole for exceptional cases in which high-ranking
officials may grant further extensions of the investigatory period.[195]

Human rights defender René Gómez Manzano, a
lawyer by trade whose license was not renewed after he became active in unofficial
groups critical of the government, was arrested on July 22, 2005, shortly after
participating in a small, peaceful protest in Havana urging the European Union
to take a tougher stance toward Cuba. Although he was never formally charged
with a crime, Gómez was held for more than a year and a half in prison
with convicted prisoners until he was released on February 8, 2007. Over the
course of his detention, his brother filed three separate acts of habeas
corpus on his behalf, all of which were dismissed.[196]
At the time of his release, Gómez had never been charged with a crime.[197]

Vladimir Alejo Miranda, a human rights defender in Havana,
was detained in December 2007 after carrying a sign in public demanding the
release of political prisoners.[198] At the
time of this report, he had yet to be tried for a crime, and was being held
with convicted prisoners in Agüica prison in Matanzas.

Dr. Darsi Ferrer Ramírez, who ran an unofficial
medical clinic and human rights center in Havana, was arbitrarily detained on
July 9, 2009—the same day he had planned to hold an unofficial public
gathering in Havana where people could come and “share their common
dreams” for the future of the island, he said.[199]
He was released at the end of the day after the planned time had passed, only
to be arrested again on July 21 and sent to Valle Grande prison in Havana.
Ferrer has been in prison since his arrest, but at the time of publication, had
yet to stand trial.

Summary Trials

When political detainees are brought to trial, they are
almost always tried in summary proceedings that violate their right to a fair
trial. While summary judgments are permitted by Cuban law, such proceedings are
only supposed to be allowed in “exceptional circumstances.”[200]
Yet scores of cases reviewed by Human Rights Watch suggest that summary trials
in political cases are the rule, rather than the exception.[201]
Nearly every former prisoner and relative of a current political prisoner
interviewed for this report alleged that the trials of dissidents lasted less
than an hour, with most taking between 10 and 30 minutes.

Summary trials provide less time to question witnesses,
review evidence, and mount a comprehensive defense.[202]
They also exacerbate the inequalities produced in the pre-trial period, when
prosecutors enjoy full access to the accused, are informed of the charges, and
can review the evidence, whereas defense attorneys are denied most, if not all,
of the same information.

Alexander Santos Hernández, a political activist in
Holguín, described the swiftness of his arrest and sentencing in July
2006 as follows, “[The police] picked me up at 5:50 am while I was at
home sleeping, and by 8:30 that morning they were already reading me my
sentence. From there to the jail cells of Holguín, and straight to
prison.”[203]

Víctor Yunier Fernández Martínez, who
belonged to an unsanctioned political group that advocated for human rights and
democracy, was tried for “dangerousness” in 2006. He said his trial
lasted less than ten minutes. The legal proceedings consisted of the prosecutor
reading his indictment and the judge accepting the recommendation to sentence
him to three years in prison. According to Fernández, the judge did not
allow him to speak during the proceedings; no witnesses testified against him;
and his lawyer, whom he met for the first time minutes before the trial, made
no effort to defend him.[204]

Closed Trials

Access to the trials of political defendants is highly
restricted, violating their right to a public trial.[205]
The Criminal Procedural Law grants judges broad authority to close trials at
any stage for reasons of state security, morality, or public order.[206]
If construed in a sufficiently narrow fashion, each of these reasons could
serve as a legitimate justification for barring the public from trials in
certain circumstances. However, the Cuban judiciary’s widespread and
systematic use of closed trials appears designed to prevent transparency and
provide cover for the contravention of basic due process rights. The law bars
everyone related to the defendant except his lawyer from attending closed
trials.[207]

Even when trials are not officially closed, authorities
consistently fail to notify family members of political detainees about trials,
or deliberately mislead relatives about when and where hearings will be held.
In other cases, authorities inform families such a short time before trials
start so as to make it impossible for them to attend. These tactics have the
effect of creating de facto closed trials even when they are not
officially mandated by judges. Independent observers, including human rights
defenders and journalists, are consistently barred from attending hearings.

On August 31, 2008, Niover García Fournier heard from
friends that his brother, political activist Yordis García Fournier, had
been detained. Niover went directly to the police station, where police said
Yordis would be fined and released the following day, yet offered no additional
details. When Niover returned the next day, police said the state prosecutor
had decided to review Yordis’s case for possible criminal charges. Niover
returned to the station several times, but authorities would not give him any
additional information about his brother’s status. On September 3, 2008,
police told Niover the state prosecutor had decided to try his brother for
contempt (desacato). Niover rushed to the prosecutor’s office,
where he was informed that his brother would be put on trial that day. By the
time Niover made it to the court, his brother had already been sentenced to a
year in prison in a hearing that took less than an hour. The state had not
notified any of Yordis’s family members of his trial. His family did not
even know the reason he had been arrested.[208]

Ana Margarita Perdigón Britosaid dozens of
neighbors, extended family members, human rights defenders and political
activists attempted to observe the trial of her brother, Raymundo, in December
2006. But security officers would not allow any of them to attend the trial.
Raymundo, a journalist, had been charged with “dangerousness.” He
was sentenced in a closed trial that only his immediate family members were
allowed to attend.[209]

Cubans from a range of different provinces told Human Rights
Watch that authorities often detain government critics to prevent them from
attending the trials of other dissidents. According to Rodolfo Bartelemí
Coba, a human rights defender in Guantanamo:

As opponents [of the government], several of us have been
detained on various occasions so that we couldn’t be present at the
trials. At times, they have told us “you cannot leave your house until 4
o’clock in the afternoon,” and they put an official or a police
officer on the corner or in front of your house to keep an eye on you.[210]

Further undermining transparency of the judicial process,
Cuban authorities routinely fail to provide copies of sentences to political
prisoners or their families. International law states that all judgments should
be made public, even in closed trials.[211]

Arbitrary Actions by
Prosecutors and Judges

The prosecution of dissidents in closed, summary trials, in
a system designed to criminalize dissent, leaves them vulnerable to rampant
abuses during judicial proceedings. Dissidents interviewed by Human Rights
Watch reported grossly arbitrary actions by prosecutors, judges, and defenders
in their cases, which further violated their right to a fair trial.

In six cases investigated by Human Rights Watch, former
political prisoners and the families of current prisoners said that prosecutors
fabricated confessions or other pieces of evidence.

One such case was that of William Reyes Mir, a political
activist from Holguín, who was charged with “dangerousness”
in September 2007. Reyes said authorities forged his signature on several
official warnings for “antisocial behavior.”[212]
He said the warnings were the main evidence used against him in his trial,
which lasted less than 15 minutes. According to Reyes:

I met [my] lawyer the moment I stood in front of the Court.
At that moment, he called me over and asked, “Are these ‘official
warnings’ yours? Why did you sign them?”

I told him, “Let me read them, because I’ve
never seen them.”
I took them and read them and said, “These warnings are not mine. They
have never been read to me, nor have I been told to sign a warning that has
these things.”

So I said, “I’ll sign my name, even with my
eyes closed it comes out the same, because I sign in only one way.”

Then I did it, I showed him that [the signature on the warnings] was not my
signature. He even saw my ID and saw my real signature and saw that truly the
other was not mine.... There in court you cannot get upset, you cannot argue.
You must be quiet because the more you defend yourself and the more you
complain, the worse the trial comes out.[213]

Reyeswas sentenced to two years of forced labor for
“dangerousness.”

Former political prisoners routinely said judges would not
allow their lawyers to present evidence in support of their innocence.[214]
When Eduardo Pacheco Ortíz—a political and human rights activist
from Matanzas—was charged with “dangerousness” in January
2008, his wife collected over 20 letters from neighbors declaring that he was an
upstanding community member. Pacheco said the letters disproved the
prosecutor’s allegation that he was a drunk who posed a threat to his
neighbors. But the judge refused to even admit the letters, Pacheco said. He
was sentenced to three years in prison for “dangerousness.”[215]

In four cases, dissidents told Human Rights Watch that
judges forbade them from speaking at any point during their trials. What’s
more, former prisoners and family members of current prisoners routinely said
state-appointed defenders failed to provide an adequate legal defense. Víctor
Yunier Fernández Martinez said his lawyer made no attempts to counter
the prosecutor’s arguments during his 2006 trial for
“dangerousness.” As noted above, journalist Ramon Velásquez
Toranzo’sdefense lawyer offered a vigorous defense at the
beginning of his hearing for “dangerousness.” But after being
called into the judge’s quarters during a recess the lawyer stayed quiet
for the rest of the trial.[216]

Almost a dozen former prisoners said their lawyers
explicitly warned them not to challenge the charges against them and to forsake
their right to appeal to avoid longer sentences. For example, Rafael Meneses
Cuco—a farmer who publicly criticized elections and was sentenced for
“dangerousness” in January 2008—said his state-appointed
lawyer warned him that if he appealed he would receive a harsher sentence. As a
result, he said he decided not to appeal his sentence of two years’
forced labor on a sugar plantation.

Parole and the Threat of
Retraction

The Cuban Criminal Code gives judges the power to grant
parole (licencia extrapenal) in cases when “it is deemed
necessary,”[217] and
states that parole can be revoked if the prisoner does not engage in
“good conduct.”[218] Both
provisions are vague, leaving judges and other officials a great deal of
discretion and few safeguards to prevent dissidents being denied parole for
political reasons or having it revoked once it has been granted. Determinations
about parole and decisions to revoke it should follow due process standards, as
they determine whether someone shall continue to be deprived of his or her
liberty.

Released political prisoners repeatedly told Human Rights
Watch that when parole was granted, authorities warned them that any exercise
of dissent would result in their being returned to prison. Such warnings,
dissidents said, were intended to dissuade them from engaging in work that
could be seen as critical of the government.

Journalist Óscar Espinosa Chepe was released on
medical grounds on November 29, 2004, after having been arrested in the 2003
crackdown. He told Human Rights Watch that his release document reads:
“Parole for the term that is deemed necessary or until he recovers his
health.” Chepe, who continues to live in Havana, has returned to his work
as a journalist, publishing articles critical of the government in foreign
outlets. As a result, he said he has received several warnings from government
officials threatening to rescind his parole, including a telephone call in 2006
from the judge who had granted the parole. The judge told Chepe that his
freedom “could be revoked at any moment,” if the judge chose.[219]

The case of dissident Hugo Damián Prieto Blanco,
recounted above,shows how swiftly authorities can revoke parole for
those who voice dissent. Prieto had completed three years and five months of a
four-year sentence when he was granted conditional release in February 2008.
Upon release, he resumed his participation in unofficial political groups,
which had led to his being charged with “dangerousness” in 2004. He
was arrested again in August 2008 and returned to prison. When authorities
arrested Prieto, they said he was being returned to prison for engaging in
“counterrevolutionary activities.”[220]

In February 2008, the Cuban government released four
political prisoners—Pedro Pablo Álvarez Ramos, Omar Pernet
Hernández, José Gabriel Ramón Castillo, and Alejandro
González Raga—on the condition that they accept forced exile to
Spain. The prisoners, all of whom were arrested in the 2003 crackdown, were forced
to choose between freedom in Spain and continued imprisonment in Cuba.
Authorities explicitly told them they would not be able to return to Cuba once
they had gone to Spain, said Álvarez.[221]

VII. Inhumane Prisons

Cuba fails to meet basic international standards regarding
the treatment of prisoners. Conditions are abysmal for common and political
prisoners alike, with overcrowded cells, unhygienic and insufficient food and
water, and inadequate medical treatment.

Under international human rights law, prisoners retain their
human rights and fundamental freedoms, except for restrictions on rights that
are required by incarceration, and the conditions of detention should not
aggravate the suffering inherent in imprisonment.[222]
But in Cuba, prisoners who attempt to exercise their rights are severely
reprimanded. Political prisoners who criticize the government, document abuses,
report violations, or engage in any activity deemed
“counterrevolutionary” suffer consequences that are harmful to
their physical and psychological health.

Political prisoners who speak out are routinely subjected to
extended periods of solitary confinement, harassment, and beatings. They are
denied access to medical treatment in spite of chronic health problems rooted
in, and exacerbated by, abysmal prison conditions. Family visits and other
forms of communication are arbitrarily refused. Human Rights Watch documented
three cases in which political prisoners were deliberately moved to close
quarters with prisoners infected with tuberculosis, despite the fact that they
themselves were not infected. Compounding these widespread and systematic
abuses is the fact that prisoners have no effective complaint mechanism through
which to seek redress, creating an environment of total impunity.

Cuba ratified the Convention against Torture and Other
Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment on May 17, 1995, which
states that no circumstances may be used to justify the use of torture, or
cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, and requires member states to take
steps to prevent it. The convention obligates states to take measures to allow
for complaints in cases of torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading
punishment, and to hold accountable those who carry out such acts.[223]

Restricted Visits and Correspondence

Prison authorities arbitrarily suspend visits from family
and friends, ban phone calls, and intercept letters to political prisoners who
express political views or challenge prison conditions. Cuban law states that
prisoners have the right to receive visits and maintain correspondence with
non-prisoners,[224]
privileges also provided for by international human rights standards.[225]
Yet political prisoners informed Human Rights Watch that these rights were
routinely suspended when prisoners exercised dissent, such as participating in
hunger strikes, reporting abuses by guards, chanting pro-human rights or
anti-government slogans, or refusing to wear prison uniforms. When authorities
cancel visits, they not only deny prisoners critical emotional support, but
also deprive them of food and medicine, as family members are allowed to bring
provisions to supplement the inadequate rations and medicine provided by prison
officials.

Political activist and human right defender Alexander Santos
Hernández said authorities repeatedly denied him family visits during
the two years he spent in Cuba Sí! prison in Holguín from 2006 to
2008. When Santos, who was serving time for “dangerousness,” asked
prison officials for a reason:

They said that you had to be on your best
behavior—salute the military, dress as a prisoner, go to [pro-government]
events in the prison, go to “rehabilitation” classes—that
visits were like a bonus and would require the signature of the rehabilitation
department. Since we weren’t doing any of these things, they
wouldn’t allow us visitors.[226]

Lázara
Bárbara Sendiña
Recardesaid authorities repeatedly cancelled her visits with her
husband, political prisoner Hugo Damián Prieto Blanco when he was being
held in Combinado del Este prison in Havana in 2008 and 2009.[227]
Prieto had been held in at least two other prisons (Canaleta and Morón),
his wife said, including both of which had arbitrarily suspended visits.
René Velásquez González, the son of political prisoner
Ramón Velásquez Toranzo, said prison authorities would only allow
him to visit his father in 2007 on the condition that he try to convince him to
abandon a hunger strike.[228]

Family members of political prisoners said authorities
routinely failed to notify them when visits had been cancelled. Because the
journey to prisons is often a long and costly one for relatives, due to
transportation costs and food purchases for inmates, the practice places an
unnecessary burden on family members. Lázara Bárbara
Sendiña Recarde told Human Rights Watch that on several occasions
authorities did not notify her that her visits with her husband had been
cancelled until she arrived at the prison.[229]

Arbitrary Prison Transfers

Under Fidel Castro, Cuban authorities consistently sent
political prisoners to prisons far from their families, despite the existence
of prisons significantly closer to their homes. After the March 2003 crackdown,
for example, Manuel Vázquez Portal—a journalist from Havana who
was sentenced to 18 years in prison—was imprisoned more than 750 km east
of his home, in Santiago de Cuba’s Boniato prison. Meanwhile,
Jesús Mustafá Felipe—one of the organizers of the Varela
Project from Santiago, who was sentenced to 25 years in the same crackdown—was
sent roughly 750 km in the other direction, to Havana’s Combinado del
Este prison. This tactic seemed designed to deliberately increase hardship for
prisoners and their families, making visits more costly and difficult, and
consequently less frequent. The practice contravenes international standards,
which state that prisoners should be kept reasonably close to their places of
residence.[230]

Under Raúl Castro, the government has reduced its use
of this tactic, imprisoning new political prisoners in facilities closer to
their families, and moving some of the prisoners who were jailed in the 2003
crackdown closer to their homes.[231]
Interviews with a range of political prisoners arrested under Raúl
Castro, however, suggest the use of a new tactic: moving prisoners between
different units within prisons. Five prisoners sentenced since July 2006
said they were subject to frequent, arbitrary moves from one prison unit to
another, increasing their risk of being attacked in large cells by individuals
convicted of violent crimes, they said.

Human rights defender Juan Luís Rodríguez
Desdín said he was moved to seven different “companies” (companías)—groups
of 80 to 100 prisoners—from 2006 to 2008, when he was imprisoned for
“dangerousness.”[232]
Political activist Digzan Saavedra Prat said he was transferred to five
different units during the year he was in prison (2008).[233]
Both men told Human Rights Watch that political prisoners were the only ones
who were transferred between units, suggesting the strategy was specifically
designed to target those serving time for expressing dissent.

Exposure to Tuberculosis

In three separate instances—each of which occurred in
a different prison at a different time—political prisoners said officials
moved them in close proximity to prisoners with tuberculosis. In all three
incidents, political prisoners were moved out of cells where they were not
exposed to TB, and were given no explanation for their transfer. The cases
suggest a deliberate effort on the part of authorities to expose political
prisoners to a highly contagious and potentially deadly disease. They also
contravene international standards, which call for medical officers to see to
the segregation of prisoners with infectious and contagious conditions.[234]

The World Health Organization (WHO) has stated that overcrowding,
poor nutrition, poor ventilation, and limited access to insufficient healthcare
make prisons breeding grounds and incubators for TB.[235] The TB-incidence rate in
prisons can be more than 30 times higher than that outside prisons. Prisoners
with serious health problems, such as those endemic to Cuban prisons, are more
susceptible to TB and suffer more adverse health effects, including death. The
mortality rate for TB in prisons can be five times higher in prisons than
outside.[236]

In 2008, dissident Eduardo Pacheco Ortízwas
serving a two-year sentence for “dangerousness” in Canaleta prison
in Ciego de Ávila, when he said he was suddenly transferred to a
different unit.

I was very surprised because the prisoners told me when I
arrived there, “Here they don’t bring in or take out anyone because
we’re in quarantine here.” And I asked, “for illness?”
And they said, “For tuberculosis.” It was very suspicious that they
put me in that place where there were 70-something cases of tuberculosis.[237]

Pacheco said the unit to which he was transferred consisted
of roughly 75 prisoners, who shared an overcrowded, single cell with poor
ventilation and two squat toilets—conditions that are ideal for spreading
the virus. To his knowledge, he was the only person in the unit who was not
infected with tuberculosis.

Two members of the group of 75 political prisoners arrested
in 2003—both of whom were already suffering from serious medical
ailments—said that they were transferred to cells with prisoners infected
with TB. Dr. Alfredo Pulido López told his wife he was transferred into
a TB-quarantined cell in Kilo 7 prison in Camagüey in 2007.[238]
And in 2005, Normando Hernández Gonzalezsaid he was assigned to
a cell in Kilo 5½ prison in Pinar del Río with a prisoner who had
TB.[239]
Neither political prisoner had been diagnosed with TB before his move, and they
were given no explanation for the transfers. Because Pulido and
Hernández were suffering from severe and chronic health problems at the
time of their exposure, both were at particular risk of being infected.

As a result of their exposure, both Pulido and
Hernández had to be given extended medical treatment for TB, consisting
of an aggressive regimen of antibiotics, which aggravated some of their
existing health problems. As Hernández wrote about his treatment in an
open letter from prison in September 2005:

The two pills I took from Monday to Friday for six months
worsened my gastrointestinal diseases, my gastritis became a chronic
gastroduodenitis, my small intestine inflammation also became chronic, and I
began to experience problems in my colon, diagnosed by the specialist in
gastroenterology Miraida.[240]

Unhygienic Conditions

Across Cuba’s wide range of prisons, conditions
routinely fail to meet requirements set by Cuban law and international
standards.[241] Cuban
law says the state is required to provide those deprived of liberty with
“articles of basic necessity” and “promote better prison
conditions.”[242]
However, former prisoners and family members of current prisoners uniformly
said that food was insufficient and unhygienic, and water was contaminated;
that cells were overcrowded, lacked proper ventilation, and were infested with
rodents, mosquitoes, and other insects; and that bedding was virtually
non-existent, with prisoners routinely sleeping on the floor. These poor
conditions affect all prisoners.

Dozens of prisoners and their family members said it was not
uncommon for as many as 100 inmates to share a single cell with only one
toilet. International standards state that different categories of prisoners
should be held in separate jails or at least in different quarters,[243]
but, as already noted, political prisoners said authorities routinely flouted
this norm. Overcrowding often leads to or exacerbates other problems, including
unhygienic living conditions, poor health, and a lack of privacy. The European
Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or
Punishment (CPT) has found that:

All of the services and activities within a prison will be
adversely affected if it is required to [hold] more prisoners than it was
designated to accommodate; the overall quality of life in the establishment
will be lowered, perhaps significantly. Moreover, the level of overcrowding in
a prison, or in a particular part of it, might be such as to be in itself
inhuman or degrading from a physical standpoint.[244]

Eduardo
Pacheco Ortíz described the conditions in Canaleta prison in Ciego de
Ávila, where he was a political prisoner for
“dangerousness”: “Each cell should fit 60 people, but in most
cases there are 80 people, and there are times that there aren’t even two
toilets. The toilets are... spaces with a hole to put your feet; there is not
even any disinfectant.”[245] In a
March 2009 telephone conversation from prison with a local human rights
defender, political prisoner Hugo Damián Prieto Blanco said that in
January 2009—when he was being held in Combinado del Este prison in
Havana—the prison had no water for an entire week. As a result, prison
officials had to ration water. “We were thirsty, and we did not have
water to bathe ourselves or flush the toilets,” Prieto said.[246]

Iván HernándezCarrillo, a journalist
who has been serving a 25-year sentence since 2003 and currently is being held
in Guanajal prison in Villa Clara, told his mother during visits that the food
he was provided was scarce and in a state of decomposition, and that eating it
gave him severe stomach pains. He also said the prison’s water supply was
contaminated, and that he had repeatedly contracted parasites. Hernández
was one of many prisoners in his cell unit of 50 prisoners who was suffering
from a staph infection and skin rashes, a problem he attributed to the unclean
conditions and all of the cellmates sharing a single toilet.[247]
Víctor Yunier Fernández Martínez, a political activist who
was moved to three prisons during three years of a “dangerousness”
sentence, said the food and water in all of the prisons gave him parasites and
bacterial infections.[248]

Unhygienic conditions can contribute to heightened rates of
disease and death in prison, and have been found to violate protections against
cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, as well as rights to life, health, and
dignity.[249]

Health
Problems and Inadequate Medical Treatment

The Cuban Criminal Code guarantees all detainees the right
to medical care in cases of need,[250] but
political prisoners said they were routinely denied treatment for serious
medical problems, many of which emerged over the course of prolonged
imprisonment. They also said that poor prison conditions—which produced
and then exacerbated such health problems—were neither monitored nor
remedied, as international standards demand.[251] In
particular, political prisoners said they were refused medical treatment as
punishment for their previous “counterrevolutionary” activities or
for voicing dissent within prison.

Under international human rights law prisoners, like all
other persons, enjoy the right to the highest attainable standard of health,
which means that prison authorities should take practical measures to protect
the physical integrity and the health of persons who have been deprived of
their liberty. Failure to provide adequate health care or medical treatment to
a detainee in prison may contribute to conditions amounting to inhuman or
degrading treatment.

States have an obligation to ensure access to health
facilities, goods, and services to all persons, including prisoners, without
discrimination on the basis of their political or other status.
Governments also have obligations to “refrain from denying or limiting
equal access for all persons, including prisoners or detainees to preventive,
curative, and palliative health services,” and to abstain from
“enforcing discriminatory practices as state policy.”[252]

Every former political prisoner and family member of a
current prisoner we spoke with said that detainees suffered serious health
ailments as a result of the substandard conditions, and that medical treatment
was inadequate or nonexistent. Dr. Alfredo Pulido López was a healthy
43-year-old man when he was arrested in the March 2003 crackdown and sentenced
to 14 years in prison for writing articles that were critical of the Cuban
government. By August 2004, his wife Rebeca Rodríguez Souto said, he
started experiencing stomach ailments and manifested the early signs of
osteoporosis. In the following months, he experienced his first migraines, a
significant loss of weight, hypoglycemia, and anxiety problems. With time, the
problems mounted. Pulido had earned his title as a dentist, but by the second
year of his detention, due to poor nutrition and lack of dental care, he
started losing teeth. Medical check-ups were rare and inadequate, his wife
said, the doctors repeatedly failing to prescribe any effective treatments for
his ailments. Then came the onset of liver problems, insomnia, and the rapid
deterioration of Pulido’s vision, Rodríguez said. As of October
2009, Pulido was still being held in Kilo 7 prison in Camagüey, where he
was suffering from 17 different chronic health problems.[253]

Dozens of former political prisoners and family members of
current political prisoners say that medical check-ups are not provided, even
when prisoners manifest serious illnesses. Alexander Santos Hernández, a
political activist and human rights defender from Holguín, said that
shortly after being sent to Cuba Sí! prison in Holguín in 2006
for “dangerousness,” his face filled with painful pustules. It was
an ailment he had never experienced before, and one he attributed to the
unsanitary conditions, contaminated water, and poor hygiene in the prison. He
said he repeatedly asked to see a doctor, but that prison officials ignored his
requests. Left with no other options and experiencing serious pain, he
undertook a hunger strike to demand a medical exam. Prison authorities waited
until he had fasted for 23 days before they allowed him to see a doctor, Santos
said.[254]

Julio Antonio Valdez Guevara, one of the 75 political
prisoners arrested in 2003, said he suffered the onset of serious kidney
problems within months of being imprisoned. He told Human Rights Watch that in
January 2004 he experienced a severely adverse reaction to an injection he was
given in Matanzas’s Canaleta prison:

I was convulsing, and a doctor said to the head [of the
prison], “He is very ill, his heart is dilated and his blood pressure is
at 200 and something, his life is at risk. He must go to a hospital.” And
the prison head said, “You know that he is not an ordinary prisoner.
Until I have authorization from Havana, I cannot move him.”[255]

Valdez Guevara said that, in spite of his critical condition
and the advice of the prison’s doctor, he was returned to his cell, where
his condition worsened and he suffered considerable pain.

Such failures to provide timely medical attention may
constitute inhuman or degrading treatment, as they unnecessarily exacerbate the
suffering of prisoners.[256]

Despite signs that prison conditions aggravate the illnesses
of all prisoners, doctors and prison officials consistently fail to ensure that
harmful conditions are improved, or to move sick prisoners to facilities less
likely to exacerbate their illnesses. This lack of oversight falls foul of
international standards requiring that prison medical officials report cases in
which prisoners’ health will be harmed by continued imprisonment; that
medical officials regularly inspect prisons and alert prison officials to
substandard conditions; and that prison officials take action to remedy the
shortcomings.[257] The
combination of lack of treatment and unchanged conditions described in
testimonies collected by Human Rights Watch suggests a deliberate disregard for
the health of prisoners.

International standards state that records of
prisoners’ medical examinations should be kept and that prisoners should
have access to their records,[258] yet
political prisoners and their families said that they were repeatedly denied
access to information about their health. Although such records should not be
shared with family members without patients’ prior consent, our interviews
confirmed that the issue was not one of consent. Political prisoners said they
repeatedly requested medical information for themselves and for their families,
only to be denied. The lack of information adds to the emotional hardship
of family members, who find themselves uninformed and powerless as they witness
the decline in health of a loved one.

A boxer and physical fitness instructor, Ariel Sigler Amaya
was in excellent shape when he was arrested in the March 2003 crackdown. The
leader of an unofficial political group, he was sentenced along with his
brother, Guido Sigler Amaya, to 20 years in prison for “acts against the
independence or territorial integrity of the state.”[259]
By 2009, he said, his illnesses included “chronic gastritis, pulmonary
emphysema, chronic pharyngitis, a bacterium, and gallbladder stones.”[260]
Having been moved between at least four different prisons and two military
hospitals, at 47 years old Arielcan no longer walk, and is now confined
to a wheelchair. “He already lost feeling in his legs—they are so
thin that you can see the bones,” said his brother, Juan Francisco Sigler
Amaya, following a February 2009 visit to the military hospital where Ariel was
being held. “He doesn’t have mobility in his shoulders and arms. He
has lost more than 100 pounds.... He is unrecognizable.”[261]

In spite of Ariel’s deteriorating condition, his
family members said they have consistently been denied information about his
health. They have not been allowed to meet with doctors or see any of his
medical records, his brother said. As a result, Ariel’s family and a
small group of supporters held a peaceful protest on February 18, 2009, outside
of the hospital where he was being treated to demand that he be given a full
medical examination and that he and his family be informed of the results.
According to his brother, the protest was forcibly broken up by State Security
agents, who beat Ariel’s wife and 15-year-old son without provocation.[262]

Harassment and Beatings

Human Rights Watch documented dozens of cases in which
prison officials physically abused, harassed, and humiliated political
prisoners in jails. Such attacks often were compounded by prison
authorities’ subsequent denial of medical treatment to the victims. This
treatment directly violates Cuban law, which states that, “The suspended
individual cannot be subjected to corporal punishment, nor is it permissible to
use any measure against him which signifies humiliation or would infringe upon
his dignity.”[263] It
also contravenes the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other
international standards prohibiting the use of cruel, inhuman, or degrading
treatment or punishment.

Political prisoner Normando Hernández Gonzáleztold his wife that in March 2006, without provocation, the “re-educator”
in prison Kilo 5½ in Pinar del Río twisted his arms behind his
back, hit him on the backs of his legs, and threw him down a flight of stairs.
Hernández said he was then placed in solitary confinement for seven days
and denied medical care for the injuries he sustained in the fall.[264]
Hernández, a journalist,is serving a 25-year sentence for
“acts against the independence or territorial integrity of the
state.”

Raymundo Perdigón Brito, another journalist, was
beaten repeatedly by guards in January and February 2008 for complaining about
conditions in Nieves Morejón prison in Sancti Spíritus, according
to his sister. Perdigón was sentenced to four years in prison for
“dangerousness” in December 2006. In one of the incidents, his
sister told Human Rights Watch, “[the guards] brought him with his hands
shackled to a place known as the ‘tunnel’ and savagely beat him. He
fell unconscious and was taken to a punishment cell for ten days.”[265]
In 2006, prison authorities in Villa Clara’s Guanajal prison beat dissident
Iván Hernández Carrillo and called him a “black
monkey” (Hernández is Afro-Cuban). Two years later, the internal
prison director (jefe del interior) of the same prison told
Hernández that he controlled all of the common prisoners, and that they
would do whatever he told them to do, including attacking Hernández.[266]

Abuse is not limited to physical attacks. Several political
prisoners spoke of being forced to commit degrading acts, as well as of
suffering verbal and psychological abuse. Journalist Alfredo Pulido López
said that, in 2008, guards in Kilo 7 prison in Camagüey stripped off his
clothes and forced him to walk down the corridor between prisoners’ cells
naked, while authorities made lewd jokes about his wife.[267]

Solitary Confinement

Prison authorities routinely subject political prisoners to
solitary confinement, either arbitrarily imposing it on political prisoners or
using it as a means of reprimanding dissent within the prison system.

International standards state that “punishment by
placing [the prisoner] in a dark cell, and all cruel, inhuman or degrading
punishments shall be completely prohibited,”[268]
and experts have concluded that prolonged solitary confinement may rise to the
level of cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment or torture.[269]
Solitary confinement is detrimental to mental and physical health, and
therefore international standards require that it “be used only in
exceptional circumstances or when absolutely necessary,” and that it last
for the shortest amount of time possible.[270]

However, nearly all of the political prisoners interviewed
by Human Rights Watch said they were subjected to solitary confinement at some
point in their detention. They described cramped, squalid cells without
bedding—some in total darkness, others with permanent bright
lights—where they were deprived of all human contact. They said they were
repeatedly denied visits by medical professionals, a further contravention of
international standards, and provided with rotting, inadequate food at
irregular intervals.[271]

From 2006 to 2009, political activist Víctor Yunier
Fernández Martínez was imprisoned in 1580 prison in Havana and
Canaleta prison in Ciego de Ávila, where he said authorities repeatedly
placed him in solitary confinement for days, weeks, and even months at a time
as punishment for his acts of dissent, which included voicing criticism of the
Cuban government and engaging in hunger strikes. He told Human Rights Watch:

The cells are one meter or one-and-a-half meters wide by
two meters long. You sleep during the day on a concrete platform and at night
you get a mattress, which is removed at daybreak. You are not allowed to have
any belongings, and the food is terrible.... Some cells have a little window,
others none. Some cells have light, others don’t.[272]

In January 2007, journalist Ramón Velásquez
Toranzo was sentenced to three years for “dangerousness” and was
sent to El Típico provincial prison in Las Tunas. According to his
daughter, he was immediately placed in solitary confinement for refusing to eat.
She said he was stripped of his clothes and placed in a tiny cell, which
flooded with water when it rained and had no bedding. In another case, Yordis
García Fournier spent three consecutive months in solitary confinement
since he was sentenced in September 2008 for refusing to cooperate with prison
authorities, according to his brother.[273]

Political prisoner Manuel Vázquez Portal said he was
immediately placed in solitary confinement when he arrived at Boniato prison in
Santiago de Cuba in 2003. As he described the conditions:

Punishment cells are one by two meters long, with a bunk
made of corrugated slats with a wooden plank of pressed sugar cane chuff, a
dirty and old cotton wool mattress. They didn’t give us sheets,
towels.... There wasn’t water, just a “Turkish” toilet with a
sickening odor. There was a window with bars an inch in diameter. Everything
got in—rain, insects, rodents, rats. It was a filthy cell.... I remained
there from April 25, 2003, to September 1st, when I began my first hunger strike.
There was no access to doctors.... We all got lung and skin diseases.[274]

According to Vázquez, six other political prisoners
who arrived at Boniato prison at the same time—men who were also
sentenced in the 2003 crackdown—were immediately placed in similar
solitary confinement. One of them was Pedro Pablo Álvarez
Ramos—a trade unionist who led an unrecognized, small union— who
described conditions identical to those recounted by Vázquez Portal.[275]

Lack of Adequate Monitoring
and Complaint Mechanisms

The Cuban prison system lacks adequate oversight mechanisms
and fails to provide effective means for prisoners to voice complaints.
Officials do not remedy abuses that are brought to their attention, allowing
abysmal conditions to persist while those responsible benefit from total
impunity. Such failings violate Cuba’s international obligations—
particularly as Cuba is a party to the Convention against Torture—to
offer effective and confidential remedies to victims of human rights abuses.[276]

Nevertheless, the Cuban government publicly maintains that
its prisons have an effective monitoring and complaint system, informing the UN
in March 2009:

Inmates are entitled to submit complaints and requests to
the authorities and to receive a proper response within a reasonable period, in
accordance with the relevant legislation. Violence and mistreatment, physical
or psychological, are totally prohibited and are crimes under Cuban law. All
prisons are subject to a system of inspection that is independent of the
authority responsible for running them.[277]

Former prisoners and the family members of current prisoners
expressed uncertainty about who was responsible for monitoring conditions and
investigating complaints inside prisons, and repeatedly said that oversight was
neither independent nor effective. Prisoners said they were not informed of
their right to complain nor how to register abuses.

The dissidents we spoke with said that complaints of abuse
are routinely met with inadequate investigations, indifference, or even
reprisals. Alexander Santos Hernández, who was imprisoned in Cuba
Sí! prison in Holguín from 2006 to 2008, said of the officer who
was supposedly in charge of receiving complaints: “It is as if [the
complaint] were never made, because whatever it is, the officers are always
right. The internal monitor never disciplines or calls attention to an officer
for any violation.”[278] Digzan
Saavedra Prat, a political activist who was also imprisoned in Cuba Sí!
in 2008 for “dangerousness,” said he went to the internal prison
overseer to seek help when a common prisoner threatened him. In response, the
official told him it was not his problem.[279]

In three cases, former political prisoners said that the
very individuals responsible for monitoring abuses were themselves the
perpetrators of beatings and harassment. Former political prisoner Víctor
Yunier Fernández Martínez said that the internal overseer in
prison 1580 in Havana—where he was imprisoned on a
“dangerousness” charge—“was one of the ones who
threatened me and even ordered several officers to assault me on September 27,
2006.”[280]

Left with no other remedy for abuses, political prisoners
routinely undertake hunger strikes and other drastic measures to call attention
to their treatment. However, these actions are often met with further reprisals
by prison officials. For example, Yordis García Fournier went on hunger
strike for more than a month in 2008 to protest his unjust treatment by prison
authorities. As punishment for his not eating, prison officials cut off García’s
family visits and placed him in a solitary confinement cell.[281]

VIII. Everyday Forms of Repression

Daily acts of repression punish dissenters and their
families in every aspect of their lives. The government uses short-term
detentions to reprimand dissidents for exercising their fundamental freedoms
and prevent them from participating in “counterrevolutionary”
activities such as unofficial meetings. Dissidents are verbally assaulted,
harassed, and beaten by security officers and groups of civilians tied to the
state, while organized public “acts of repudiation” target their
homes, subjecting them and their families to humiliation and even mob attacks.

Government officials repeatedly threaten dissidents with
imprisonment if they do not abandon their activities. They are fired from jobs,
denied work, and fined, placing a significant financial strain on their
families. The government also routinely prohibits its critics from exercising
their right to travel within and outside of the island. Finally, dissidents are
subjected to constant and invasive surveillance, the information from which is
often subsequently used against them in sham trials.

Short-term Detention

Security forces routinely carry out short-term detentions to
punish dissidents or prevent them from participating in events seen as
“counterrevolutionary.” Dozens of dissidents who were victims of
such arbitrary arrests told Human Rights Watch that they were provided with no
explanation for their detention, and held with convicted prisoners in inhuman
conditions for hours or even days—practices that contravene the Cuban
constitution[282] and
international standards governing the treatment of prisoners.[283]

Since Raúl Castro took over for Fidel Castro in 2006,
the number of arbitrary detentions has increased significantly. The Cuban
Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation (CCDHRN), a
well-respected human rights organization in Cuba, documented 325 arbitrary
detentions by security forces in 2007.[284] In the
first half of 2009, it documented 532.[285] Such
detentions are routinely timed to prevent individuals from exercising their
right to assemble peacefully.

The widespread use of arbitrary
detention is codified in Cuban law, which empowers and in some instances
obligates government officials to make arrests. According to the Criminal
Procedural Law, authorities and police must detain anyone who commits a “crime
against national security,” whose acts “have produced fear or...
are committed frequently in the municipality’s territory,” or against
whom “enough evidence exists to reasonably predict that the accused
intends to evade the pursuit of justice.”[286]
These subjective definitions allow officers to interpret a wide range of
actions as grounds for detention.

In December 2008, the Cuban government preemptively arrested
more than 30 people in the days leading up to International Human Rights Day
(December 10). Most were arrested as they attempted to travel to Havana to
participate in small meetings of unofficial groups or dissident activities
planned for the day, which marked the 60th anniversary of the signing of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights.[287]

Among those targeted were dissidents Belinda Salas, Lázaro
Joaquín Alonso Román, Marlene Bermúdez, and Roberto
Marrero de la Rosa, who were attacked on December 9, 2008, in Havana after
using computers to check email at the US Interest Section. Salas is a leader of
an unofficial women’s organization, Cuba’s Latin American
Federation of Rural Women, and her husband, Alonso, a former political
prisoner. According to Bermudez and Marrero—human rights defenders from
Camagüey—eight security officers assaulted the dissidents and beat
them severely with no apparent justification. Alonso was hit repeatedly in the
groin, face, and head until he was knocked unconscious. Officers tore the
shirts off of Bermúdez and Salas, leaving them partially naked. Alonso,
Bermudez, and Marrero were all detained, only to be released after December 10,
with no charge.[288]

Marta Díaz Rondon, a human rights defender, said she
had been detained a half dozen times in recent years in advance of planned
meetings and gatherings with fellow dissidents. Díaz said, “Every
day that there is going to be an activity, such as a peaceful march, they take
repressive actions. They don’t allow us to see each other or to
travel.”[289] In
March 2009, she said she had been detained when trying to visit Jorge
Luís García Pérez—also known as
Antúnez—who was staging a hunger strike in his home to call for an
end to abuses of political prisoners.

Three dissidents in eastern Cuba said they were the victims
of a practice they called kidnappings (secuestros), in which
plainclothes agents arrested them, took them to undisclosed locations,
interrogated them, and then released them. Marco Antonio Lima Dalmau, a
journalist and human rights defender from Holguín who was the victim of
one of these “kidnappings” in 2009, said he never even knew to
which part of Cuba’s security forces his captors belonged, and was given
no record of his detention.[290]

Beatings and Excessive Use
of Force

Dissidents engaged in acts seen as
“counterrevolutionary” are routinely subjected to assaults,
beatings, and excessive use of force by security officers. The attacks are
carried out both by government officials and members of groups of sympathetic
civilians tied to the government, such as “committees for the defense of
the revolution” (CDRs) and “rapid response brigades.”[291]

On February 24, 2008, journalist and human rights defender
Ana Margarita Perdigón Brito, together with her father and brother,
participated in a small, peaceful demonstration in Sancti Spíritus to
mark the anniversary of a 1996 incident in which the Cuban government shot down
two planes from a Miami-based organization.[292] She
said security officers disrupted the rally, “savagely beat” the
participants, and took her, her father, and her brother to a police station.
There, police officers threw her father against a wall and put her in a
stranglehold until she lost consciousness.[293]

Alexander Santos Hernández, a dissident in
Holguín, said he was assaulted in June 2006 by eight members of a
“rapid response brigade”—a group of civilian sympathizers
tied to the government. The group, which was led by a ranking officer in the
local police department, attacked him in the street without any provocation,
telling him he would be imprisoned or killed if he did not abandon his
“counterrevolutionary” activities.[294]

In four separate instances in Matanzas, Holguín, and
Las Tunas, dissidents told Human Rights Watch that they narrowly escaped being
hit by cars that deliberately tried to run them over. The intended victims said
that the drivers or passengers yelled comments during or after the attacks that
suggested they were targeted because of their political activities.

Juan Francisco Sigler Amaya, a human rights defender and
brother of two political prisoners, said a car tried to run him over in January
2006 when he was riding his bike to the sugar plantation where he was working
in Matanzas province:[295]

The car was coming from behind while I was riding my
bike. It had its lights on, but I felt it was accelerating and when they
had sped up they shut off the lights at great speed. My survival instinct
kicked in and I managed to make a hard turn, which saved my life. I almost cut
my belly with the machete I was carrying, since I rolled three times while on
the bike.

[The people in the car] shouted, two men and a woman,
saying horrible things like "Counterrevolutionary, we are going to kill
you!" Then they disappeared.[296]

Dissidents also reported a pattern of excessive force by
police and state security officers in the course of arrests. On August 31,
2008, two members of the unofficial political group, Youth for Democracy (Jovenes
por la Democracia), Yordis García Fournier and Isael Poveda Silva,
went to a police station in Guantanamo to visit Enyor Díaz Allen, a
fellow member who had been arbitrarily detained the day before.[297]
When the police would not permit the visit, García and Poveda stood
outside the station and began shouting pro-human rights and anti-Castro
slogans. Without warning—as they would later tell family
members—police fired teargas at them and stormed out of the station,
punching and kicking them repeatedly even though they did not fight back.[298]
García and Poveda were later sentenced to one year and one year and four
months in prison, respectively, for acting in contempt of
authority.

Dissidents and family members who tried to attend trials of
political detainees say they were routinely harassed, threatened, and, in at
least four cases, physically attacked. Simply attempting to observe the
administration of justice put them in danger.

When journalist Raymundo Perdigón Brito was sentenced
in December 2006 for “dangerousness,” his family attended the
trial. When Perdigón’sfamily left the court in Sancti
Spíritus, members of a “rapid response brigade” swarmed
around them, beating them while police looked on, his sister said.[299]

In September 2008, human rights defender Ramona
Sánchez Ramírez tried to attend the appeal of a pair of
dissidents in Guantanamo. The dissidents had been sentenced with contempt for
chanting anti-government slogans in public. Sánchez said that when
authorities would not let her into the trial, she joined a peaceful protest
outside the courthouse with dissidents and friends of the accused. Without
warning or provocation, a mob of security officers, uniformed court officials,
and members of a “rapid response brigade” attacked the
demonstrators with sticks and other weapons. She said they were beaten even
though they offered no resistance.[300]

Public Acts of Repudiation

Acts of repudiation (actos de repudio) are public
protests held outside the homes of dissidents. Like other attacks, the acts are
intended to humiliate and intimidate individuals who voice dissent, and have
repeatedly resulted in mob violence. Supposedly planned by civilians, the
accounts of victims suggest that government officials collaborate with
“committees for the defense of the revolution” in carrying out the
acts.

Acts of repudiation last anywhere from several hours to a
full day. According to the victims, the participants’ tactics include
yelling insults and verbal threats, banging on pots and pans to create noise,
throwing stones at homes and defacing them with insulting graffiti, illegally
invading homes, and physically assaulting the inhabitants.

While the acts are supposedly carried out by neighbors,
every victim of acts of repudiation pointed to evidence that suggested the
government’s orchestrating role. Many said the participants were bused to
their homes in state-owned vehicles, such as military trucks or public buses.
The victims also said they had never met the participants before, who therefore
had no way of knowing about their activities, let alone justification for
denouncing them. In addition, victims said they observed certain participants
wearing military fatigues or other government uniforms, suggesting they worked
for the state.

Roberto Marrero la Rosa, a human rights defender from
Camagüey, said he and his family had been the targets of six acts of
repudiation in the past several years.[301] He
said the agitators, who were bused in from other neighborhoods, threw stones at
his house and yelled insults for hours, calling him a “mercenary”
of the United States and a “worm.” The repeated acts were so
frightening that Marrero la Rosa’s daughter decided to move out of the
house with her child. Marco Antonio Lima Dalmau said that when he and his
family tried to leave their home in Holguín during one such act of repudiation
in 2008, they were beaten severely by a mob.[302]

Yet despite the violations produced by such acts, not one of
the eight victims of acts of repudiation we interviewed said police had
intervened to protect them. Nor were any of the people participating in such
acts detained, even when they committed acts that violated the law, such as
illegally entering homes or attacking residents, and even when their behavior
clearly “produced alarm”[303]—
one of the broad categories under which Cuban authorities are required to
detain people.

Threats and Warnings

In addition to the implicit threat posed by a legal system
designed to criminalize dissent, the government explicitly threatens dissidents
with imprisonment, physical violence, and other punishments. In the case of
“dangerousness,” these warnings are built into the law itself. The
Criminal Code states that individuals engaged in “antisocial
behavior” should receive official warnings informing them of their “dangerousness.”
These warnings are designed to bring about a change in behavior to
“prevent socially dangerous activities.”[304]
For dissidents, the warnings signal imminent imprisonment if
“counterrevolutionary” activities are not abandoned.

Marco Antonio Lima Dalmau, a dissident from Holguín,
said he had been given more than a dozen official warnings for
“dangerousness” since 2007, all for engaging in peaceful activities
such as marches, and knew he could be arrested at any time.[305]
Gabriel Díaz Sánchez, a human rights defender in Bayamo, told
Human Rights Watch that security officials had come to his home several times
to tell his family members that he would be charged with “dangerousness”
if he did not give up his activities.[306]

Dissidents told Human Rights Watch they were also warned for
being unemployed, which is considered a form of “antisocial
behavior.” As discussed above, dissidents are systematically denied jobs
because of their political views and then charged with
“dangerousness” for being unemployed. For example, Enyor Díaz
Allen, a dissident in Guantanamo, said he was issued three official warnings
from January to March 2009 for being unemployed. In the second instance, he
said, a police captain told him that if he did not find a job he would be
charged with “dangerousness” and sentenced to four years in prison.[307]

Journalist Juan Carlos Hernández said he had received
roughly 15 citations and warnings since 2005.

Whenever they feel like it they give you [an official
warning]. It’s a mechanism they have so that at any given moment,
for that number of warnings, they can say, “Enough, we won’t warn
you any more, we’ve already told you several times and now we’re
going to do it.” And they take you out of circulation for at least four
years. That’s how it works.[308]

Official warnings are not the only way dissidents are
intimidated. In some instances, government officials and citizen groups tied to
the state threaten dissidents with assault, rape, and even death.

Rufina Velásquez González said that when she
attempted to walk with her parents—Ramón and Bárbara—from
Santiago to Havana in 2007 to raise awareness about human rights violations and
political prisoners, her family was confronted in Holguín and
Camagüey by “rapid response brigades.” The brigade
participants threatened them with wooden bats, stones, and metal rods wrapped
in newspaper, telling the marchers that they would be beaten if they did not
turn back. Rufina and her mother were threatened with rape, and called
“sluts” and “whores.” Security officers who were
present at several of these confrontations made no effort to restrain or disarm
the brigade participants.[309]

Four dissidents said government officials explicitly
threatened to kill them for their political activities. Alexander Santos
Hernández said a major in the police force told him that the next time
he saw him on his motorcycle, he was going run him over with his car. The
officer said he would use his connections within the government to hide
evidence of the killing.[310]

Three dissidents who told Human Rights Watch that they were
constantly being threatened with imprisonment were indeed arrested and
sentenced after speaking with us. Juan Luís Rodríguez
Desdín, Rodolfo Bartelemí Coba, and Enyor Díaz Allen were
imprisoned within months of speaking with Human Rights Watch.

Rodolfo Bartelemí Coba, a human rights defender, told
Human Rights Watch in March 2009 that he had been given six official warnings
for “dangerousness” in the past year. His most recent one had come
for trying to attend a meeting in Guantanamo of the Citizens’ Committee
Against Mistreatment (Comité ciudadano contra los malos tratos),
an unofficial group that assembles to share information about violations in the
region.[311] During
his interview, he said he feared he could be arrested at any time. Ten days
later, he was arrested and taken to prison to complete a sentence dating back
to 1994, for which he had been paroled years earlier.[312]

Juan Luís Rodríguez Desdín—a
former political prisoner who had served two years for
“dangerousness”—told Human Rights Watch in March 2009 that he
had been subject to repeated threats by authorities.[313]
Despite the warnings, Rodríguez did not abandon his human rights work.
In May 2009, he was arrested and sentenced to two more years in prison for
“public disorder.”

Because such warnings and threats often presage real attacks
and imprisonment, they are a source of significant fear and intimidation in the
dissident community, and help create an environment where dissenters worry they
could be assaulted or arrested at any moment.

Invasive Surveillance

Dissidents and non-dissidents suspected of
“counterrevolutionary” tendencies are subjected to constant,
multifaceted surveillance at the hands of the government and groups of civilian
sympathizers tied to the state. The government uses various methods to monitor
the activities and communications of dissidents, including tapping phones;
hacking into email accounts; planting hidden listening devices; observing,
photographing, and filming meetings of civil society groups; clandestinely
searching homes; and assigning security officers to track their every move.

Surveillance is carried out by security officers and by
civilian groups tied to the government—who may work together or
independently. Dozens of dissidents said security officers were permanently situated
outside of their homes and followed them wherever they went; while
“committees for the defense of the revolution”—civilian
groups that are located in every neighborhood and whose function is to protect
the revolution against all threats— constantly watched their neighbors
for suspicious behavior and reported to state security officials.

Dissidents said that once they had been “marked”
as suspicious, they were constantly watched by these groups. Dissident Rufina
Velásquez González said that when she traveled from her home in
Las Tunas to meetings of unofficial groups that sought alternatives to the
government:

The state was always pursuing me wherever I traveled. They
knew in which houses I would stay. That makes one feel watched. I would arrive
at a station to reserve a ticket to go to another province and they would tell
me that the State Security had been asking about me, what I had been doing,
where I was going.[314]

Roberto Marrero la Rosa said that of the eight households
located on his street in Camagüey, six had members who held official
positions in the CDR, ranging from the president to the head of propaganda, and
that all were monitoring his behavior.[315]
Rodolfo Bartelemí Coba, a human rights defender in Guantanamo, said he
was followed every time he left his home.[316]

The Cuban government has also used informants posing as
dissidents to spy on the activities of unofficial groups that are critical of
the state. In the trials of the 75 dissidents in 2003, state prosecutors relied
on the testimony of infiltrators who had posed as opponents of the government
to testify to the counterrevolutionary activities of their former colleagues.[317]
Several of the informants had been working clandestinely alongside dissidents
for decades and had earned their utmost confidence. In the trials of ten
dissidents in April 2004, a man who had been posing as a journalist revealed
himself as a government agent and testified against other nonviolent political
activists.[318]

Denial of Employment and
Financial Hardship

The Cuban constitution gives the government the power to
organize, manage, and control all economic activity, and to allocate workers
according to the “requirements of the economy and society.”[319]
The state directs virtually all sources of employment, membership in the lone
official union—the Workers’ Central of Cuba (Central de
Trabajadores de Cuba, or CTC)—and access to worker’s training
programs.[320]

Government officials routinely use this control to deny
employment to those who do not share its ideological views. Dissenters across
Cuba said it was difficult to get a job without joining the CTC, which some did
not wish to join on principle as it is directly controlled by the government.
Dissidents and non-dissidents also told Human Rights Watch that employers contacted
“committees for the defense of the revolution” and police to check
on potential employees’ political views and loyalty to the government
before hiring them.

Dissidents reported dozens of cases in which they had been
fired because of their opinions or participation in unauthorized civil society
groups. Eduardo Pacheco Ortíz—a former political prisoner who
served two years on a “dangerousness” charge, and who monitors
human rights in Matanzas—said that since his release in August 2008 he
had been fired from one job after another. He said every time employers learn
of his political views, he is fired.[321]

Víctor Yunier Fernández
Martínez—who had also been sentenced to “dangerousness”
for belonging to an unauthoritzed political group in Havana, and was released
in February 2009—said he had been fired from two jobs as an auto mechanic
because he was seen as a “counterrevolutionary.”[322]
Fernández said that when he was fired from the second job, his boss told
him he had no choice: employing a member of the “opposition”
created problems for his business. In the time since, Fernández said, he
had been turned away from several jobs, with bosses explicitly telling him they
would not hire him for political reasons.

Dissidents said that the denial of employment places a
significant economic strain on their families. Fernández said that,
without a job, he had to rely on the support of his extended family to eat.
Gertrudis Ojeda Suave—a former political activist imprisoned for
“dangerousness” and single mother of three children—said that
being labeled a dissident keeps her from finding a job. When she applied for a
job cleaning floors at a state hospital, she was told she was not trustworthy
because of her political views. Without a regular source of income, she said, she
regularly has to put her three children to bed without dinner.[323]

As seen above, the government routinely uses unemployment as
justification for sentencing dissidents under the social “dangerousness”
provision—making the denial of work not only harmful to families, but
dangerous as well.

Fines

In addition to effectively blacklisting dissidents, the
government imposes further financial hardship on them by routinely meting out
heavy fines. Dissidents said they were fined for exercising basic civil and political
rights, as well as for setting up their own small businesses without government
authorization.

The Cuban Criminal Code assigns a range of possible fines
for specific violations, giving judges a great deal of discretion to set the
amount.[324] Cuban
law states that judges should take into account the earning potential of the
offender when setting an amount, “taking care not to affect, as much as
possible, the portion of his/her resources set aside for his/her own needs and
the needs of his/her dependents.”[325] Those
who cannot pay fines are to be locked up for a period of time that will allow
them to repay their debt, the law says.[326]

However, the fines assigned to dissidents are often so huge
that, when repaying them, they find it difficult to afford basic necessities.
René Velásquez Gonzales said he was fined 750 pesos for selling
pizza and soda without a permit in Las Tunas—more than two times his
monthly wage. He said he had to work three jobs to pay the fine in time and
avoid going to prison, leaving only a few hours a night to sleep.[327]
Ramona Sánchez Ramírez said that in the aftermath of the
hurricanes of 2008, several dissidents in Guantanamo were singled out for
“hoarding” (acaparamiento), because they possessed basic
foodstuffs such as tomatoes or cabbage.[328] She
said they were fined between 500 and 3,000 pesos—the latter nearly a
year’s wages.

Reprisals against Families

The Cuban government punishes entire families for the
dissenting activities of one of their members. Family members of political prisoners
and dissidents endure threats, loss of work, denial of basic social services,
and public humiliation, among other forms of discrimination and abuse.

Shortly after her husband was imprisoned in 2003 for working
as an independent journalist, Rebeca Rodríguez Souto was expelled from
an adult education center where she had been taking classes. When she asked a
school administrator why, he said that government officials had ordered her
expulsion because she was the wife of a “mercenary,” and because
she had “ideas against the government.”[329]
Rodríguez said she had never expressed her political views at school.

Dissidents in Sancti Spíritus, Matanzas, Guantanamo,
and Holguín said their children were expelled from school or humiliated
by teachers because of their parents’ activities or political opinions.
According to Eduardo Pacheco Ortíz, his daughter was kicked out of
school with no explanation after he was imprisoned for
“dangerousness” in 2008.[330] Ramona
Sánchez Ramírez said her daughter was barred from continuing her
university studies and her grandson was mocked by his teacher in front of his
entire class as a result of Sánchez’s human rights work.[331]

Dozens of family members of political prisoners and
dissidents said they had been fired from their jobs or denied work because of
their relation to individuals branded as “counterrevolutionaries.”
After dissident Yordis García Fournier was sentenced for contempt (desacato)
in September 2008, three of his siblings were fired from their jobs. Two of
them were explicitly told they were being punished because of their relation to
a political prisoner.[332] As has
been noted elsewhere, the loss of income places significant financial strain on
families, and leaves the jobless at risk of being charged with “dangerousness.”

Travel Restrictions

The Cuban government also discriminates against dissidents
in the awarding of travel visas. The Cuban government forbids the country's
citizens from leaving or returning to Cuba without first obtaining official
permission. Unauthorized travel can result in criminal prosecution. As Human
Rights Watch found in its report, Families Torn Apart: The High Cost of US
and Cuban Travel Restrictions, these travel restrictions provide the Cuban
government with a powerful tool for punishing defectors and silencing critics.[333]

In May 2008 blogger Yoani Sánchez was awarded a
Spanish journalism prize. The government initially issued an exit visa to
Sánchez, but before she was scheduled to leave the visa was put on hold
without explanation, and she was unable to accept the award in person.[334]
In October 2009, Sánchez was again denied permission to leave the
country to accept a different award from Columbia University in New York.[335]
In February 2008, four political prisoners who had been arrested in the 2003
crackdown were released on the condition that they leave immediately for Spain.
Pedro Pablo Álvarez Ramos—one of the four prisoners
released—said they were explicitly told that in exchange for their
freedom they would never be allowed to return to Cuba.[336]

On November 21, 2008, the rapper Bian Oscar Rodríguez
Galá—a member of the group los Aldeanos (the Villagers), whose
lyrics have been overtly critical of the Castro government—was denied
permission to leave Cuba for the second consecutive year to participate in an
annual international music competition. Rodríguez, who had qualified by
winning a rap competition in Cuba, was refused an exit visa despite having
provided all of the required documents.[337]

Juan Juan Almeida García has been denied the right to
leave Cuba to receive medical treatment for a rare degenerative illness since
2003.[338]
Forty-four-year-old Almeida, who suffers from Ankylosing Spondylitis, was
allowed to travel to Belgium in the nineties to receive treatment, which is not
available in Cuba. He has applied several times per year for permission to
leave Cuba to be treated by doctors abroad, but all of his requests have been
denied without explanation. On his most recent visit to an immigration office,
an officer told him that the refusal of permission in his case came from the
“high command” of the government. As a result of his lack of
treatment for more than six years, Almeida’s daughter told Human Rights
Watch, his health has declined considerably. He has to sleep sitting in a
chair, because the pain in his joints and bones prevents him from sleeping
lying down, and he cannot walk without assistance. His daughter arranged for
free medical treatment in August 2009 in California, but Almeida was again
denied an exit visa.[339]

The government has also clamped down on the movement of
citizens within Cuba by more aggressively enforcing a 1997 law known as Decree
217. Designed to limit migration to Havana, the decree requires Cubans to
obtain government permission before moving to the country's capital.[340]
According to one Cuban official, the police forcibly removed people from Havana
in approximately 20,000 instances from 2006 to August 2008.[341] Dissidents
said they were routinely detained arbitrarily or prohibited from leaving their
home province, particularly in advance of gatherings of unauthorized civil
society groups distrusted by the government.

IX. State of Fear

The repressive practices of the Raúl Castro
government documented in this report have generated a climate of fear that has
a profound impact on dissidents and Cuban society as a whole. Fear of
repression shapes behavior, pressuring Cubans to participate in pro-government
activities and discouraging them from voicing dissent or participating in
activities that may be perceived as “counterrevolutionary.”
Individuals who express unpopular political views live in constant fear of
being harassed, beaten, or arrested.

The Cuban government’s widespread use of surveillance
and infiltrators creates an atmosphere where Cubans feel they are constantly
being watched. Surveillance is not only a source of anxiety in itself, but it
also fosters distrust and suspicion within the dissident community. This
distrust extends to the laws and institutions entrusted with protecting
Cubans’ rights. Dissidents have no confidence in the ability of the
courts to give them a fair trial.

Fear is a central part of the Cuban government’s
strategy of isolation, which pressures friends and family members to sever ties
with dissidents. This isolation, together with other forms of harassment, takes
a significant emotional and psychological toll on dissidents and their
families. It may lead to depression or lasting psychological problems.

Self-Censorship and Coerced Allegiance

Fear pressures individuals to participate in pro-government
activities and show their allegiance to the party. Having a job, belonging to
the local “committee in defense of the revolution” and the
state-sponsored union, attending pro-government rallies—all are seen as
ways of proving one’s loyalty to the “revolutionary” project.
To not participate is to mark oneself as suspicious, or even dangerous.

In the words of human rights advocate Ramona Sánchez
Ramírez, “Everything works through fear.... People know they have
to go to revolutionary activities, because if not, they’re looking for
trouble.”[342]
“Gerardo Domínguez,” a youth in Havana, told Human Rights
Watch that his local committee for the defense of the revolution took
attendance at meetings and government-sponsored events, and passed along the
names of those who did not attend to security officials.[343]

Fear also discourages individuals from voicing dissent or
from participating in any activity that may be perceived as
“counterrevolutionary.” Non-dissidents and dissidents alike
repeatedly said that any form of dissent could lead to repression—be it
an arrest, a beating, imprisonment, or some other measure. As former political
prisoner and leader of an unauthorized labor union Pedro Pablo Álvarez
Ramos described the system:

In Cuba everyone has a file. If you are not in line with
the system or are unwilling to carry out the tasks they assign, if you do not
want to adopt that attitude or be part of the party, or of the
committee—then you’re marginalized.... Those are the ones regarded
as likely to commit crimes. In Cuba, one has to be a revolutionary for
everything.[344]

Human rights defender Rodolfo Bartelemí Coba told
Human Rights Watch, “We live 24 hours a day ready to be arrested at any
moment.... Sometimes they enforce [the punishment] at this moment, sometimes later,
but they always enforce it when they see fit.”[345]
Alexander Santos Hernández described the threat of repression as ever
present, calling Cuba “a system already designed to prosecute you.”
He said this was especially true with the “dangerousness”
provision, which he described as, “a law that’s prepared so they
can accuse you [of breaking it] at any moment. It’s like a trap for
a mouse with its mouth open: they just have to wave it in front of you and in
just one day you’re in prison.”[346] Of the
“dangerousness” law, Eduardo Pacheco Ortíz said,
“They’re always instilling fear with this law. Every opponent has
been suppressed by fear.”[347]

Several individuals said they had deliberately scaled back
their participation in activities that could be considered critical of the
government to avoid being arrested. William Reyes Mir used to be an active
member of a small, unofficial political group that aims to make Cuba into a
multiparty system. But he said that since completing two years of forced labor
for “dangerousness,” he had not participated in any of the
organization’s activities, out of fear of being arrested.[348]
During interviews Human Rights Watch conducted in Cuba, interviewees said that
even speaking to outsiders was likely to arouse the suspicion of the
neighborhood “revolutionary” committee, and that talking about
human rights could lead to their imprisonment.

Local Cuban blogs provide a window into the way fear
permeates Cuban society on the whole. In his blog “From Here,”
former journalist-turned-blogger Reinaldo Escobar wrote:

You can be certain that the vast majority of the people
living in Cuba have never felt repression by the government on their own
flesh. A few have been taken to Villa Marista [prison], and many have even
been visited [by authorities] and warned not to misbehave. Most people
have not been dismissed from their jobs or expelled from school because of
their political views....

Why then does an index finger cross the lips, eyes widen,
or a look of horror appear on the faces of my friends when at their houses I
commit the indiscretion of making a political comment within earshot of the
neighbors? We already know where those who fight in the face of fear are ...
and the paralyzed are all around us, waiting to see what the brave ones do.[349]

Yoani Sánchez, who writes the blog “Generation
Y,” wrote:

Soon, very soon— [the neighbors] warn me—I
could hear a knock at my door very early one morning. In anticipation of this,
I would like to point out that I do not keep weapons under the
bed. However, I have committed an unfailing and heinous
offence: I have believed myself to be free....

But don’t fool yourself; I’m not entirely
innocent. I carry with me a mountain of misdeeds; I have routinely
bought on the black market, I have commented in a low voice—and in
critical terms—about those who govern us, I have nicknamed politicians
and joined in the pessimism. To top it off, I have committed the
abominable offense of believing in a future without “them” and in a
version of history different from that which they have taught me. I
repeated the slogans without conviction, washed the dirty laundry in full view
and—the greatest transgression—I have joined words and phrases
together without permission.[350]

Although some point to the emergence of such blogs as proof
that Raúl Castro’s government tolerates dissent, many of the blogs
are blocked within Cuba. Moreover, access to the internet is limited to a few
government-run centers and tourist hotels, where it costs approximately US$5
per hour, or one-third of Cubans’ monthly wages. Private internet
connections require special permission from the government, and are rarely
granted.

As a result, bloggers often write their posts on home
computers, save them on memory sticks, and upload them through illegal
connections. Ironically, bloggers rarely have the opportunity to see their own
blogs. In an August 2009 post, blogger Luis Felipe Rojas wrote: “I write
without being able to answer those who support or rebut my poor arguments. Never
have I been able to see this blog online.”[351]
Furthermore, as novelist Ángel Santiesteben wrote on his blog,
individuals who write critically risk “the loss of friends, some of whom
distance themselves out of fear of repression,” as well as threats and
physical attacks by government officials.[352]
Blogger Rojas was the subject of an arbitrary arrest and interrogation because
of his writing.[353]

Surveillance and Suspicion

Constant government surveillance makes dissidents feel as
though their every move is being watched, while the use of infiltrators fosters
distrust and suspicion among groups.

Dissidents repeatedly said that their phones were tapped and
their conversations recorded by security officers, citing as evidence the fact
that authorities later repeated back to them parts of phone conversations or
people with whom they had spoken. Víctor Yunier Fernández
Martínez told Human Rights Watch that he could be punished for saying
anything critical about the government over the phone:

These words I'm saying to you could cost me my life. They
may lead to my summoning. They could come here to look for me right now in a
car, because here all the phone lines are governmental, they’re bugged.[354]

The day after a telephone interview with Human Rights Watch,
dissident Eduardo Pacheco Ortíz said he was arrested while walking down
the street. In a later call, Pacheco said, “They did not tell me anything
about the call because they don’t want to give themselves away. But I
know that it is because of the call.”[355]

Dozens of times during Human Rights Watch’s phone
interviews with dissidents, calls were abruptly cut off, and in several cases
dissidents’ phone lines were suspended for hours or days after
interviews. Dissidents attributed these phenomena to interference by censors.

Dissidents said government officials deliberately revealed
their surveillance capabilities as a form of intimidation. Marco Antonio Lima
Dalmau said that during previous interrogations government officials had
mentioned information that they would have known only if they had planted
microphones in his home.[356]
“Joaquín Durán,” a member of the clergy, said
that when he was brought in for questioning by State Security, officers ran
down a list of every political activity and gathering that he had attended in
recent months.[357]

Dissidents told Human Rights Watch that the government used
infiltrators to collect information. As evidence, they pointed to preemptive
arrests before planned gatherings and security officers’ knowledge of
issues discussed in small groups. René Velásquez
González—the son of a political prisoner who has attended meetings
of unauthorized political groups—said that, even when among dissidents,
he was very careful when voicing criticism of the government, because there was
no way of being sure that everyone was trustworthy.[358]

Distrust of the Courts

Dissidents say that Cuba’s judicial system works hand
in glove with security forces to repress dissent. In the words of dissident
Rufina Velásquez González, “In Cuba, judges and juries are
basically another arm of the state security forces. They are there so that the
laws of the revolution are followed, not justice and legal parameters.”[359]

Dissidents routinely told Human Rights Watch that they had
no faith in the ability of the courts to reach just decisions or fulfill their
duty to safeguard fundamental freedoms. Dissidents called their trials
“theatre” and “a show,” and said their sentences were
“pre-written” and “pre-decided.” According to Enyor Díaz
Allen, “In Cuba, there are no rights. When they want, they put you in
prison.”[360] Other
dissidents said the legal system was used to shield government officials who
committed abuses. Ana Margarita Perdigón Brito, a dissident who suffered
numerous beatings at the hands of security officers, said, “The authorities
are authorized with impunity. Whether they break the law or not—nothing
happens to them.”[361]

René Gómez Manzano described the way the
various branches of the Cuban government work in concert to repress dissent:

This works like a sugar processing factory, where first you
put in the cane, then it goes through a mill, and the process continues until
the bag of sugar comes out the other end. The police grab you and go to the
district attorney saying, “Look, we detained this individual.” Then
the district attorney accuses you. And if the district attorney accuses you
then the initial court immediately punishes you. You appeal and when it reaches
the superior court, the superior court ratifies the action and that’s it.
A reversal of the initial court’s decision is practically unthinkable.
There’s no other way to do things there.[362]

Former political prisoners and family members of current
prisoners said courtrooms were filled with uniformed and plainclothes officers
and members of “rapid response brigades,” creating a threatening
atmosphere. “The room was full of armed men,” said Yaraí
Reyes Marín, the wife of journalist and political prisoner Normando
Hernández González, describing his show trial in 2003. She said
the armed officers, who greatly outnumbered Hernández’s immediate
family, made her feel frightened and isolated.[363]

Dissidents’ lack of faith in the independence of the
courts has real consequences for their conduct in legal proceedings. As seen
above, dissidents repeatedly choose not to appeal their decisions or even
contest the charges against them because of the perception that any
challenge—no matter how well-founded—would result in a harsher
sentence.

For example, William Reyes Mir did not appeal his sentence
of two years’ forced labor for “dangerousness,” despite the
fact that the state prosecutor falsified charges against him. He told Human
Rights Watch, “Here people almost never appeal because appeals are
dangerous. [The lawyers] threaten that if you appeal, it could end up badly....
People appeal and end up with harsher sentences.”[364]

Emotional and Psychological
Impact

Everyday acts of repression, inhuman imprisonment, and fear
take a significant emotional and psychological toll on dissidents. Former
political prisoner Víctor Yunier Fernández Martínez told
Human Rights Watch that since his release from jail in February 2009, he was
afraid to leave his home:

At this moment I feel tense, I feel stressed, because
they’ve already condemned me.... I'm not even going out, I'm here in my
house. I'm afraid of walking, I'm afraid they’ll take me back to prison.
I fear it because I already suffered, my whole family suffered. I fear for what
might happen to me.[365]

The emotional and psychological repercussions often extend
to the families of dissidents. Journalist Juan Carlos Hernández said
that, as a result of his frequent arrests, his wife began to suffer anxiety
attacks and chronic nightmares about him being arrested. As a result, she had
to seek psychiatric treatment. He described the atmosphere produced by this
intimidation:

Yes, I'm afraid. Not just me—my family. We live in
constant confinement. If they knock on the door, we don’t want to know
who it is, our hearts pound so hard it feels like they’ll burst.... When
you analyze this series of actions, they practically have it designed to throw
your nerves out of balance.[366]

Wives and children of political prisoners said they
experienced periods of depression as a result of their husbands’ or
fathers’ confinement. When her husband was charged with “dangerousness”
in January 2007, Bárbara González Cruz was unable to leave her
bed for several weeks, her son said. She stopped eating and would not speak to
anyone.[367]

Rebeca Rodríguez Souto’s son was a teenager
when his father—journalist Dr. Alfredo Pulido—was sentenced to 14
years in prison in 2003. Rodríguez Souto said that after his
father’s detention, his behavior changed dramatically. He became
reserved, did not want to go to school, and withdrew into isolation. She said
she regularly found him taking his father’s clothes out and laying them
on his bed, where he would stare at them.[368]

Juan Francisco Sigler Amaya said public acts of repudiation,
which had been repeatedly staged outside of his home, had terrified his four
children. He said they had suffered lasting trauma from the siege of their
homes—replete with menacing chants, insults, stone-throwing, and
threats—telling Human Rights Watch: “[The acts] stay etched in
their minds for a lifetime. They traumatize them and they will carry this
psychological burden. From this horror, they get frightened by anything, and
don’t allow anyone to enter the house.”[369]

Former political prisoners described lasting pain from the
cruel, inhuman, and degrading conditions they endured in Cuban prisons. Manuel
Vázquez Portal, who was released in 2004, was subjected to sustained
periods of solitary confinement, and engaged in hunger strikes to call
attention to the abysmal conditions in which he and other prisoners were held.
He said that five years after his release he continued to suffer “periods
of irritability and depression,” as well as recurrent nightmares about
solitary confinement, for which he has sought psychological treatment.[370]
Pedro Pablo Álvarez Ramos, a political prisoner who was released in
February 2008, said:

I had never suffered from depression, and now every once in
a while it happens to me. Sometimes I wake up very early in the morning and
think that I'm still in prison. No one is spared. One lives so much
horror—it’s such a difficult experience, being
isolated—especially when one hasn’t done anything.[371]

A
Strategy of Isolation

Fear is a critical component in the government’s
strategy to isolate dissidents from their neighbors, coworkers, friends, and
loved ones. Authorities use what clergy member “Enrique Jiménez”
described as a system of “rewards and punishments” to cut off those
it sees as its enemies: ongoing contact with those labeled
“counterrevolutionary” may lead to punishment, while informing on
them or isolating them is rewarded.[372]

In eight cases, dissidents said that authorities pressured
their family members and friends to sever ties with them. Dissident Alexander
Santos Hernández, from Holguín, said that his childhood
friend—a woman who has never been involved in dissident
activities—was told by authorities that her daughter would be expelled
from school if she maintained her friendship with Santos.[373]

Sometimes, pressure by government officials can cause family
members to end relationships with dissidents. Enyor Díaz Allen, a
dissident in Guantanamo, said that his mother had stopped talking to him
because of pressure from police.[374] Digzan
Saavedra Prat, a dissident from Holguín and former political prisoner,
said his brother cut off all contact with him when authorities warned him that
continued contact with his “mercenary” brother would cost him his
job.[375]

Roberto Marrero la Rosa, a human rights advocate in
Camagüey, has a daughter-in-law who used to work in the public
prosecutor’s office. According to Marrero, government officials approached
her and said that if she wanted to keep her job, she would have to divorce her
husband (Marrero’s son) and put their child up for adoption. When she
refused, she was fired, Marrero said.[376]

Former political prisoner Eduardo Pacheco Ortíz
described the effect of such isolation on his family’s social network in
Matanzas:

In the city, no one is allowed to talk to me. People who come
to my house are immediately called by state security and reprimanded. Then these
people—for fear of losing their jobs, for fear that [the authorities]
will take it out on someone in their family—simply stop talking to me.[377]

Rufina Velásquez Gonzales—daughter of political
prisoner Ramón Velásquez Toranzo—said security officers
approached several of her friends and asked them to report secretly on her
activities.[378] She
said the harassment she received in public was a major factor in her decision
to leave Cuba for the United States—a decision made harder by the
knowledge she was leaving a father in prison and a brother and mother who had
been shunned by much of their community.

Rufina’s brother, René Velásquez
Gonzales, who remained in Las Tunas with his mother, told Human Rights Watch
that authorities questioned everyone who spent time with him, asking why they
were spending time with a known “worm.” One day, after having a
soda with a friend, security officers accused Velásquez of trying to
indoctrinate the friend with “counterrevolutionary ideas.”
Following the incident, Velásquez decided to stop hanging around with
his closest friends to avoid getting them in trouble. His co-workers stopped
talking to him, and his girlfriend left him. He described the feeling of
isolation as asphyxiating. “It’s like having someone plant a boot
right in the middle of my chest, and applying so much pressure I can hardly
breathe. Just when I think I am going to suffocate, a little air makes it
through. And then the pressure is back again.”[379]

Human Rights Watch is deeply grateful to the Cubans who
shared their testimonies with us. As this report documents, Cubans take a
considerable risk in discussing human rights with outside organizations.
Nevertheless, scores of Cubans agreed to speak with us about the repression
they endured. Three of those individuals—Rodolfo Bartelemí Coba,
Enyor Díaz Allen, and Juan Luís Rodríguez
Desdín—were arrested after speaking with us. Others were harassed,
threatened, or detained. Human Rights Watch also thanks the individuals who
provided guidance in the research and planning of the fact-finding mission to
Cuba, who have asked not to be named so as not to compromise their access to
the island.

Appendix
1: List of the 53
Political Prisoners Arrested in the 2003 Crackdown Who Remain in Prison under Raúl
Castro

Human Rights Watch sent four letters to then Cuban
Ambassador to the United Nations, Abelardo Moreno Fernández, and the
head of the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, D.C., Jorge Bolaños
Suarez.

The letters requested an audience with Ambassadors Moreno
and Bolaños to discuss human rights issues in Cuba and asked for
permission for Human Rights Watch to conduct a fact-finding mission to Cuba.

The requests were sent via fax to both officials on March
30, April 7, April 28, and July 15, 2009. The receipt of these faxes was
confirmed through follow-up telephone calls by Human Rights Watch to the Cuban
Mission to the UN and the Cuban Interests Section.

Human Rights Watch received no response from the Cuban
government to any of our requests, two of which have been reproduced below,
both in the original Spanish and translated into English.

Chapter 1

The State of Dangerousness

Article 72. A state of dangerousness is
considered to be the special propensity of a person to commit crimes, as
demonstrated by conduct observed in manifest contradiction to the norms of
socialist morality.

Article 73.

1. The state of dangerousness is
seen when any of the following hazardous indicators occur concurrently in the
individual:

a)habitual drunkenness and dipsomania;

b)drug addiction;

c)antisocial behavior

2. A person is considered to be in a state of dangerousness
due to antisocial behavior if the person routinely breaks the rules of social
coexistence by committing acts of violence, or by other provocative acts,
violates the rights of others or by his or her general behavior weakens the
rules of coexistence or disturbs the order of the community or lives, like a
social parasite, off the work of others or exploits or practices socially
reprehensible vices.

Article 74. Mentally ill persons and persons of
delayed mental development are also considered to be in a state of dangerousness,
if, because of [their mental condition], they do not have the ability to
comprehend the scope of their actions nor to control their conduct, provided
that these represent a threat to the security of others or to the social order.

Chapter 2

The Official Warning

Article 75.

1. Anyone who, without falling
under [the categories of] any of the states of dangerousness referred to in
Article 73, by his or her ties or relations with persons who are potentially
dangerous to society, to other individuals and to the social, economic and
political order of the socialist state, may as a result develop a propensity to
commit crime, will be given a warning by the competent police authority, to
prevent the individual from pursuing socially dangerous or criminal activities.

2. The warning will be executed, in any case, by means of a
written document that states the causes that establish the [state of
dangerousness] and the information provided by the warned person, signed by the
latter and by the acting [officer].

Chapter 3

Security Measures

FIRST
SECTION: General Regulations

Article 76.

1. Security measures can be
ordered to prevent the commission of crimes or as a result of their having been
committed. In the first case they are called pre-criminal security measures;
and in the second, post-criminal security measures.

2. Security measures are applied when the individual
displays any of the dangerousness indicators referred to in Articles 73 and 74.

Article 77.

1. Post-criminal security
measures, as a general rule, are applied after the termination of the imposed
sanction.

2. If during the implementation
of a security measure applied to a convicted person, a penalty of imprisonment
is imposed on said person, the execution of the security measure will be
suspended, to be renewed once the penalty has been served.

3. If, in the case mentioned in the previous section, the
sanctioned person is conditionally released, the safety measure will be
terminated on completion of probation as long as the probation has not been
revoked.

SECOND
SECTION: Pre-criminal Security Measures

Article 78. Once a person
has been declared to be in a state of dangerousness by the corresponding
process, the most adequate of the following pre-criminal security measures may
be applied:

a)therapeutic;

b)re-educational;

c)oversight by the agencies of the National Revolutionary Police.

Article 79.

1. The therapeutic measures are:

a)internment in a welfare, psychiatric or detoxification
institution;

b)appointment to specialized educational center, with or without
internment;

c)outside medical treatment.

2. The therapeutic measures are
applied to mentally ill persons and persons of delayed mental development in a
state of dangerousness, to dipsomaniacs and to drug addicts.

3. The implementation of these measures shall last until the
state of dangerousness disappears in the individual.

Article 80.

1. The re-educational measures
are:

a)internment
in a specialized institution for work or study;

b)surrender to a
labor collective, for the control and orientation of the conduct of an individual
in a state of dangerousness.

2. Re-educational measures are
applied to antisocial individuals

3. The term of these measures is at least one year and at
most four years.

Article 81.

1. The monitoring by agencies of
the National Revolutionary Police consists of orientation and control of the
conduct of an individual in a state of dangerousness by officials of these
agencies.

2. This measure is applicable to
dipsomaniacs, drug addicts and
antisocial individuals.

3. The term of these measures is at least one year and at
most four years.

Article 82. The court may impose the appropriate type
of pre-criminal security measure according to its respective degree, and will
establish its extension within the set limits of each case, choosing those
which are of detentive or not detentive character, depending on the severity of
the individual’s state of dangerousness and the possibilities for his or
her rehabilitation.

Article 83. The court, at any time during the
execution of the pre-criminal security measure may change its category or
duration, or suspend it at the request of the agency in charge of its
implementation or by the court’s discretion. In the latter case, the
court will ask for the executing agency’s report.

Article 84. The court will inform the prevention
agencies of the National Revolutionary Police of the decided pre-criminal
security measures which should be carried out under conditional liberty, for
the purposes of their execution.

[1]
This account is based on Human Rights Watch telephone interviews with Ramon
Velásquez Toranzo’s wife, Bárbara González Cruz, in
Cuba, on March 3 and April 23, 2009; and Human Rights Watch telephone
interviews with Ramon Velásquez Toranzo’s daughter, Rufina
Velásquez González, in Miami, on April 28 and May 14, 2009.

[2]
This account is based on a Human Rights Watch telephone interview with
Alexander Santos Hernandez, Cuba, March 16, 2009.

[3]This account is based on
Human Rights Watch telephone interview with “Hilda Galán” on
February 24, 2009, regarding the case of her husband, political prisoner
“Jorge Barrera Alonso.” Galán asked that her name and her
husband’s be changed to avoid reprisals while her husband is still in
prison.

[10]
The Johannesburg Principles on National Security, Freedom of Expression and
Access to Information (Johannesburg Principles), E/CN.4/1996/39(1996),
Principles 2(a), 7(a)i, 7(a)ii, and 7(a)iv. An authoritative set of guidelines
regarding permissible limitations which may be placed on freedom of expression,
adopted in 1996—were drafted by an international team of legal scholars,
diplomats, and United Nations human rights specialists meeting in Johannesburg.

The Johannesburg Principles also distinguish between
legitimate and illegitimate invocations of national security interests.
Legitimate reasons to invoke national security interests are to: “protect
a country’s existence or its territorial integrity against the use or
threat of force, or its capacity to respond to the threat or use of force,
whether from an external source, such as a military threat, or an internal
source, such as incitement to violent overthrow of the government.” In
contrast, illegitimate justifications for invoking national security interests
include acting to: “protect the government from embarrassment or exposure
of wrongdoing, or to entrench a particular ideology, or to conceal information
about the functioning of its public institutions, or to suppress industrial
action.”

[11]Código Penal (Criminal Code), Asamblea Nacional del
Poder Popular, No. 62, 2001, http://www.gacetaoficial.cu/html/codigo_penal.html
(accessed January 12, 2009), art. 144. The National Assembly is
Cuba’s highest legislative body, while the Council of State is its
highest executive body. The structure of the Cuban government is discussed in
greater detail in the section Denying Judicial Protection.

[13]
Insult laws are “a class of legislation that criminalizes expression
which offends, insults, or threatens a public functionary in the performance of
his or her official duties.” Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
(IACHR), “Report on the Compatibility of Desacato Laws with the American
Convention on Human Rights,” Annual Report of the Inter-American
Commission on Human Rights 1994, OEA/Ser/.L/V/11.88, 1995, http://www.cidh.org/annualrep/94eng/chap.5.htm
(accessed September 15, 2009). The offense does not necessarily involve a
false assertion; for this reason proving its truth is generally no defense.
Moreover, it is usually classified not only as a detriment to the honor of the
public official in question but also to his or her office. By extension it is
often considered an offense against public order.

[14]
The commission wrote, “[t]he special protection desacato laws
afford public functionaries from insulting or offensive language is not congruent
with the objective of a democratic society to foster public debate.” It
also noted that in democratic societies, political and public figures must be
more, not less, open to public scrutiny and criticism. “Since these
persons are at the center of public debate, they knowingly expose themselves to
public scrutiny and thus must display a greater degree of tolerance for
criticism.” IACHR, Report on the Compatibility of Desacato Laws, 1994.

More recently, in Palamara Iribarne v. Chile
(2005), the Inter-American Court of Human Rights held that “in the case
of public officials, individuals who perform public services, politicians, and
government institutions a different threshold of protection should be applied,
which is not based on the specific individual, but on the fact that the
activities or conduct of a certain individual is of public interest.”
Inter-American Court, Palamara Iribarne Case, Judgment of November 22, 2005,
Inter-Am Ct. H.R. (Ser. C) No. 35 (2005),
http://www.corteidh.or.cr/docs/casos/articulos/seriec_135_ing.pdf (accessed
September 15, 2009), para. 88.

[21] Ley de protección de la independencia nacional y la
economía de Cuba (The Law for the Protection of Cuban National
Independence and the Economy), Gaceta Oficial de la República de Cuba,
No. 88, 1999, http://www.cubavsbloqueo.cu/Default.aspx?tabid=248 (accessed
March 13, 2009) (“National Protection Law”).

[24]
“Anyone who, in the interest of a foreign state, commits an act with the
aim of undermining the independence of the Cuban state or the integrity of its
territory shall be punished by imprisonment of ten to twenty years or
death” (“El que, en interés de un Estado extranjero, ejecute
un hecho con el objeto de que sufra detrimento la independencia del Estado
cubano o la integridad de su territorio, incurre en sanción de
privación de libertad de diez a veinte años o muerte”).
Criminal Code, art. 91.

[33]
This law is not to be confused with the offenses of conspiracy or attempt under
which a person can be arrested and prosecuted before a crime has been committed
or completed, but where a decision to commit a specific crime has been reached.
Conspiracy is when a person has made an agreement with at least one other
person to commit a specific criminal offense. Generally, in law, to prove
conspiracy it is necessary to show that such an agreement—formal or
informal—exists, and that at least one overt act in the furtherance of
the agreed crime has taken place. Attempt is when a person, either alone or
with others, makes a substantial but unsuccessful effort to commit a crime.
Generally, in law, to prove attempt there must be intent to commit the crime,
an overt act beyond mere preparation, and an apparent ability to complete the
crime.

[34]
This does not include cases of legitimate pre-trial detention of persons held
on criminal charges, provided for in international law.

[37]The United Kingdom and Ireland also have legislation which
renders “anti-social behavior” subject to sanction by way of a
civil order from a court. See the UK Anti-social Behaviour Act of 2003 and
Irish Criminal Justice Act of 2006, parts 11 and 13. Anti-social Behaviour
Bill, The House of Commons of the United Kingdom, 2003, http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200203/cmbills/083/2003083.pdf
(accessed September 5, 2009); Criminal Justice Act of 2006, The Houses of the Oireachtas
of Ireland, No. 26 of 2006, http://www.oireachtas.ie/documents/bills28/acts/2006/A2606.pdf
(accessed September 5, 2009), parts 11 and 13.

Anti-social behavior is generally defined as that
which causes harassment, significant or persistent alarm, distress, fear,
or intimidation to someone who is not from the same household as the offender.
The order directs the offender not to engage in specific conduct such as
vandalism or begging, and failure to comply with the order may result in a fine
or detention. While these anti-social behavior orders are civil not criminal
measures and are subject to specific conditions, they have still been very
controversial and widely criticized by human rights organizations and bodies. Council of Europe: Commissioner for Human Rights, “Report
by Mr. Alvaro Gil-Robles on his visit to the United Kingdom, 4th November to
12th November 2004,” CommDH(2005) 6, Strasbourg, June 8, 2005, paras. 108
- 120; Council of Europe: Commissioner for Human
Rights,” Memorandum by Mr. Thomas Hammarberg, Council of
Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, following his visits to the United
Kingdom 5-8 February and 31 March-2 April 2009,” CommDH (2008) 27,
Strasbourg, October 17, 2008, paras. 29 - 30; United Nations Human Rights
Committee, Concluding Observations on the United Kingdom, CCPR/C/GBR/CO/6, July
30, 2008, para. 20.; United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child,
Concluding Observations on the United Kingdom, CRC/C/GBR/CO/4, October 4,
2008 para. 79 – 80.

[45]
This modification can be made according to the court’s discretion (de
oficio) or at the request of the “agency in charge of its
execution” (organo encargado de su ejecución). Criminal
Code, art. 83(1).

[51]
The doctrine and rationale were set out by the Inter-American Court in a case
against Peru, when it explained, “crimes must be classified and described
in precise and unambiguous language that narrowly defines the punishable
offense.” Inter-American Court, Castillo Petruzzi et al. Case, Judgment
of May 30, 1999, Inter-Am. Ct. H.R., (Ser. C) No. 52 (1999),
http://www.corteidh.or.cr/docs/casos/articulos/seriec_52_esp.pdf (accessed
August 20, 2009), para. 121.

The requirement of “clarity” of the law is
to be found in two aspects of human rights law. Firstly, it is required when
defining proscribed criminal behavior in penal statutes –a doctrine often
referred to as the “void for vagueness”
doctrine enshrined in article 15 of the ICCPR and article 9 of the ACHR. And
secondly, it is required in the limitations on the enjoyment of certain
fundamental rights, which must be prescribed by, established by, or in
accordance with “law” (such as those enshrined in articles 17
– 22 of the ICCPR or articles 12 – 13, 15 – 17 of the ACHR).
Manfred Nowak, UN Covenant on Civil and Political Rights: CCPR Commentary,
2nd rev. ed,. (Kehl am Rhein: Engel, 2005), p.361.

[70]
According to the Cuban constitution, the Attorney General is “the body of
the State concerned with control and preservation of legality as fundamental
objectives.” Cuban constitution, art. 75 (m) and (n); Criminal Procedural
Law, art. 45.

[79]
Ibid., 234. Other organizations include: Cuban Workers Federation (CTC),
Federation of Cuban Women (FMC), Committee for the Defense of the Revolution
(CDR), National Association of Small Farmers (ANAP), Federation of University
Students, and Federation of Secondary School Students (FEEM).

[87]
“The judiciary shall decide matters before them impartially, on the basis
of facts and in accordance with the law, without any restrictions, improper
influences, inducements, pressures, threats, or interferences, direct or
indirect, from any quarter or for any reason.” Basic Principles on the
Independence of the Judiciary, adopted by the Seventh United Nations Congress
on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders, Milan, 26 August to
6 September 1985, U.N. Doc. A/CONF. 121/22/Rev. 1 at 59 (1985), art. 2.

[89]
The American Convention on Human Rights provides that: “Every person has
the right to a hearing, with due guarantees and within a reasonable time, by
a competent, independent, and impartial tribunal, previously established by
law, in the substantiation of any accusation of a criminal nature made against
him or for the determination of his rights and obligations of (. . .) any other
nature” (emphasis added). American Convention on Human Rights
(“Pact of San José, Costa Rica”), adopted November 22, 1969,
O.A.S. Treaty Series No. 36, 1144 U.N.T.S. 123, entered into force July 18,
1978.

The International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights (ICCPR) also imposes an obligation to guarantee the independence of the
judiciary in article 14 (1): “All persons shall be equal before the
courts and tribunals. In the determination of any criminal charge against him,
or of his rights and obligations in a suit at law, everyone shall be
entitled to a fair and public hearing by a competent, independent and impartial
tribunal established by law…” (emphasis added). International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, adopted December 16, 1966, General
Assembly Resolution 2200 A (XXI), entered into force March 23, 1976, signed by
Cuba on February 28, 2008.

[93]
Basic Principles on the Independence of the Judiciary, adopted by the Seventh
United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of
Offenders, Milan, 26 August to 6 September 1985, U.N. Doc. A/CONF. 121/22/Rev.1
at 59 (1985), arts, 2, 10, and 11.

[94]UN Human Rights Council, Report of the Personal Representative of
the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Christine Chanet, on the Situation of
Human Rights in Cuba, A/HRC/4/12, June 12, 2007.

[95]
UN Human Rights Council, Working Group on the Universal Periodic Review,
“Compilation Prepared by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human
Rights [on Government of Cuba],” A/HRC/WG.6/4/CUB/2, December 18, 2008.

[96]
In its 2008 report to the UN’s Universal Periodic Review, Cuba stated,
“Chapter VII of the Constitution, on ‘Fundamental rights, duties
and guarantees,’ basically sets forth the principles and guarantees of
human rights and fundamental freedoms, which are in line with the rights contained
in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the other international human
rights instruments. These are complemented by other chapters of the
Constitution and the provisions of ordinary law.” Government of Cuba,
Periodic Report to the Universal Periodic Review of the Human Rights Council,
A/HRC/WG.6/4/CUB/1, November 4, 2008.

[97]
The key international human rights and labor agreements ratified by Cuba
include the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading
Treatment or Punishment, ratified in May 1995; the Convention on the Rights of
the Child (CRC), ratified in August 1991; the Convention on the Elimination of
All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD); the Convention on the Elimination of
All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), ratified in June 1980; and
various International Labor Organization conventions, including Convention 87,
the Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organize, ratified in
June 1952; Convention 98, the Right to Organize and Collective Bargaining
Convention, ratified April 1952; Convention 105, the Abolition of Forced Labour
Convention, ratified June 1958; and Convention 141, the Rural Workers'
Organizations, ratified in April 1977.

[98]By signing, a country “has expressed its
consent to be bound by the treaty, pending the entry into force of the treaty
and provided that such entry into force is not unduly delayed.” Vienna
Convention on the Law of Treaties, concluded May 23, 1969, UN Doc.
A/CONF.39/28, 1155 UNT.S. 331 (entered into force Jan. 27, 1980), art. 18.

In February 2009, Cuba’s Minister of Justice
affirmed Cuba’s commitment to complying with the ICCPR and ICESCR,
stating before the UN Working Group on the Universal Periodic Review that:
“We signed the international covenants on human rights as a demonstration
of our will and commitment to the postulates of both of these
instruments.”

[99]
Government of Cuba, “Cuba is complying with the precepts of the
International Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners,”
Statement by the Minister of Justice of the Republic of Cuba, María
Esther Reus, Presentation of the National Report to the Human Rights Council,
Geneva, February 5, 2009,
http://america.cubaminrex.cu/DiscursosIntervenciones/Articulos/Otros/2009/2009-02-06-Ruas_ING.html
(accessed April 19, 2009).

[105]
“Given the goals of rogue states and terrorists, the United States can no
longer solely rely on a reactive posture as we have in the past. The inability
to deter a potential attacker, the immediacy of today’s threats, and the
magnitude of potential harm that could be caused by our adversaries’
choice of weapons, do not permit that option. We cannot let our enemies strike
first.” The National Security Strategy of the United States of America,
September 2002, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/nsc/nss/2002/
(accessed September 2, 2009). For further analysis of the 2002 US national
security strategy,: Memorandum from Ivo H. Daalder, senior fellow, Council on
Foreign Relations, “Policy Implications of the Bush Doctrine on
Preemption,”to Members of the CFR/ASIL Roundtable on Old
Rules/New Threats, November 16, 2002,
http://www.cfr.org/publication.html?id=5251 (accessed August 14, 2009).

[106]
Government of the United States, Statement by Secretary of State Colin Powell
to the UN Security Council on the US Case Against Iraq, February 6, 2003,
transcript by CNN,
http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/02/05/sprj.irq.powell.transcript/ (accessed March 3,
2009).

[107]
The US Interests Section is the highest US office in Cuba. The United States
does not have an embassy in Cuba. Cuba also maintains a Cuban Interests Section
in Washington, D.C.

[111]
According to the constitution, the referendum “expressly set forth the
irrevocable character of socialism and of the revolutionary political and
social system set out by [the constitution]” (“dejar expresamente
consignado el carácter irrevocable del socialismo y del sistema
político y social revolucionario por ella diseñado”). Cuban
constitution, Note.

[113]
Felipe Pérez Roque, Foreign Minister of the Republic of Cuba,
“Press Conference on the mercenaries at the service of the empire who
stood trial on April 3,4,5 and 7, 2003,” Havana, April 9, 2003,
http://www.granma.cu/documento/ingles03/012.html and
http://www.cubaminrex.cu/Archivo/Canciller/2003/FPR_conferencia%20sobre%20mercenarios%20090403.htm
(accessed February 28, 2009).

[123]”The Council urges the Cuban Government
to release unconditionally all political prisoners, including those who were
detained and sentenced in 2003.” European Union Council (EU Council),
“EU Council Conclusions on the EU Common Position on Cuba,”
CL09-141EN, June 15, 2009, http://www.eu-un.europa.eu/articles/fr/article_8787_fr.htm
(accessed September 17, 2009), para. 4.

[145]Joint Resolution
No. 1 of the Ministry of Labor and Social Security and the Ministry of Finances
and Prices, which led to the development of Legislative Decree No. 141, dated
Sept. 8, 1993 and passed in June 1996. As cited in Jesús R. Mercader
Uguina, Reality of Labor in Cuba and the Social Responsibility of Foreign
Investors (Valencia: Tirant Lo Blanch, 2006), p. 106.

[146]
Human Rights Watch interview with “Gerardo Domínguez,” Cuba,
July 2009. Domínguez’ name has been changed for his protection.

[154]
The Cuban government created “committees for the defense of the
revolution” (comités de defensa de la revolución) in
1960, according to Fidel Castro, to “serve in defense of the
Revolution”; to assist in “the shaping of a political and
revolutionary conscience in the broad masses”; and “in the constant
mobilization of the masses,” among other functions. “Discurso
Pronunicado por Fidel Castro Ruz, Presidente de la República de Cuba, en
el Acto Central Nacional por el Vigesimo Aniversario de la Constitución
de los Comités de Defensa de la Revolución,” September 27,
1980, http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/1980/esp/f270980e.html
(accessed September 20, 2009).

To this day, CDRs continue to exist on virtually every
block in every neighborhood, where their primary responsibility is to monitor
“counterrevolutionary” activity and defend the state against all
threats. CDRs play a central role in suppressing dissent through carrying out
surveillance, reporting on fellow citizens, organizing acts of repudiation, and
harassing critics of the government, among other forms of collaboration with
the Cuba’s repressive security forces. By the end of the 1990s, CDRs
counted roughly 7.5 million Cuban citizens on their membership roles, roughly
three-fourths of the population. Domínguez,
“Government and Politics,” pp. 257-259.

[158]
Roger Cohen, “The End of the End of the Revolution,” The New
York Times, December 5, 2008,
http://travel.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/magazine/07cuba-t.html?sq=Cuba%20CUC&st=cse&scp=1&pagewanted=all
(accessed April 7, 2009).

Cuba has two currencies, the convertible peso (CUC)
and the peso, known as moneda nacional. Foreign tourists in Cuba use the
CUC, while Cubans are paid in pesos. As of October 2009, one CUC was valued at
approximately 28 pesos. Some products in Cuba are available only in CUCs, which
some Cubans have attacked as a form of economic apartheid. Carol J. Williams,
“Cuba’s two-currency system adds up to a social divide,” The
Los Angeles Times, May 8, 2008, http://articles.latimes.com/2008/may/08/world/fg-peso8
(accessed April 7, 2009).

[170]
Throughout this chapter, the term political detainee will be used to refer to
individuals who have been arrested for exercising fundamental rights, such as
the right to freedom of expression or assembly.

[175]
Human Rights Watch telephone interview with “Hilda Galán,”
the wife of “Jorge Barrera Alonso,” Cuba, February 24, 2009. The
wife of Barrera asked that her name and that of her husband be kept anonymous,
out of fear that her husband would be punished for her testimony. Barrera
remains in prison to this day.

[176]
”A detained or imprisoned person shall have the right to be visited by
and to correspond with, in particular, members of his family…” Body
of Principles for the Protection of All Persons under Any Form of Detention or
Imprisonment (Body of Principles), adopted December 9, 1988, G.A. Res. 43/173,
annex, 43 UN GAOR Supp. (No. 49) at 298, UN Doc. A/43/49 (1988), no. 19.

“Prisoners shall be allowed under necessary
supervision to communicate with their family and reputable friends at regular
intervals, both by correspondence and by receiving visits.” United
Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (Standard Minimum
Rules), adopted by the First United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime
and the Treatment of Offenders, held at Geneva in 1955, and approved by the
Economic and Social Council by its resolution 663 C (XXIV) of July 31, 1957,
and 2076 (LXII) of May 13, 1977, art. 37.

[186]
Human Rights Watch telephone interview with Eduardo Pacheco Ortíz, Cuba,
March 19, 2009. Pacheco, a human rights defender and fellow member of the
Movimiento Independiente Opción Alternativa with Curbelo, had been in
contact with Curbelo’s lawyer.

“Every individual who has been deprived of
his liberty … also has the right to humane treatment during the time he
is in custody.” UN Standard Minimum Rules; Basic Principles for the
Treatment of Prisoners, adopted December 14, 1990, G.A. Res. 45/111, annex, 45
UN GAOR Supp. (No. 49A) at 200, UN Doc. A/45/49 (1990); UN Body of Principles,
articles 10-26, 91.

American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man,
O.A.S. Res. 30, adopted by the Ninth International Conference of American
States (1948), art. 25; American Convention on Human Rights (“Pact
of San José, Costa Rica”), adopted November 22, 1969, O.A.S.Treaty
Series No. 36, 1144 U.N.T.S. 123, entered into force July 18, 1978, reprinted
in Basic Documents Pertaining to Human Rights in the Inter-American System,
OEA/Ser.LV/11.82 doc. 6 rev .1 at 25 (1992),art. 5.

[201]General Comment 32 warns
against the abuse of emergency clauses to restrict the right to a fair trial:
“States derogating from normal procedures required under article 14 in
circumstances of a public emergency should ensure that such derogations do not
exceed those strictly required by the exigencies of the actual situation. The
guarantees of fair trial may never be made subject to measures of derogation
that would circumvent the protection of nonderogable rights.” UN Human
Rights Committee, General Comment No. 32, The Right to Equality before Courts
and Tribunals and to a Fair Trial, UN Doc. CCPR/C/GC/32 (2007), para. 6.

[203]Human Rights Watch telephone
interview with Alexander Santos Hernández, Cuba, March 16, 2009.
Santos’s family was never notified about the trial, and so could not
attend. He was sentenced to four years in prison for
“dangerousness.”

[205]
“Everyone shall be entitled to a fair and public hearing by a competent,
independent and impartial tribunal established by law. The press and the public
may be excluded from all or part of a trial for reasons of morals, public order
or national security in a democratic society, or when the interest of the
private lives of the parties so requires, or to the extent strictly necessary
in the opinion of the court in special circumstances where publicity would
prejudice the interests of justice.” International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights (ICCPR), art. 14(1). “Everyone is entitled in full
equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal,
in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge
against him.” Universal Declaration of Human Rights, art. 10.

General Comment No. 32 suggests that the right to a
public trials translates into a duty for the courts to “make information
regarding the time and venue of the oral hearings available to the
public” and provide space to accommodate them—one the courts in
Cuba consistently do not fulfill. UN Human Rights Committee, General Comment
No. 32, The Right to Equality before Courts and Tribunals
and to a Fair Trial, UN Doc. CCPR/C/GC/32 (2007), para. 6.

“Every person accused of an offense has the
right to be given an impartial and public hearing, and to be tried by courts
previously established in accordance with pre-existing laws, and not to receive
cruel, infamous or unusual punishment.” The American Declaration of the
Rights and Duties of Man, art. 26

[211]
ICCPR, art. 14(1): “…any judgment rendered in a criminal case or in
a suit at law shall be made public except where the interest of juvenile
persons otherwise requires or the proceedings concern matrimonial disputes or
the guardianship of children.” UN Human Rights Committee, General Comment
32:“the essential findings, evidence and legal reasoning must be made
public” even in closed trials.

[212]
“Official warnings” (advertencias oficiales) are written
citations used to warn individuals that they are participating in dangerous
activities and advise them to abstain from doing so in the future. They are
supposed to be presented to the recipient and signed to acknowledge
culpability. When signed, they function as a virtual confession that one has
partaken in the activity noted in the warning, and are therefore a very damning
piece of evidence. See “Dangerousness” in “The Legal
Foundation of Repression in Cuba” above.

[214]
Defendants have the right “to examine, or have examined, the witnesses
against him and to obtain the attendance and examination of witnesses on his
behalf under the same conditions as witnesses against him.” ICCPR, art.
14(3)e.

[218]
In cases of “dangerousness,” the courts have the power to change
the nature or duration of “re-education” on the recommendation of
the authorities responsible for carrying it out. Criminal Code, arts. 31 (4)
and 83.

[223]
Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or
Punishment, adopted and opened for signature, ratification and accession by
G.A. Res. 39/46, entered into force June 16, 1995, ratified by Cuba
on May 17, 1995..
Article 16 (1) provides that, just as with torture, each state
party is required to prevent other acts of cruel, inhuman or degrading
treatment or punishment which do not amount to torture as defined in article 1
of the convention, when such acts are committed by, at the instigation of, or
with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in
an official capacity. Article 16 explicitly states that the obligations
contained in articles 10, 11, 12, and 13 shall apply with the substitution for
references to torture or references to other forms of cruel, inhuman or
degrading treatment or punishment. Article 10 relates to the training of
relevant personnel who may be involved in the custody, interrogation, or
treatment of any individual subjected to any form of arrest, detention or
imprisonment. Article 11 ensures interrogation rules, instructions, methods,
and practices—as well as arrangements for the custody and treatment of
persons subjected to any form of arrest, detention, or imprisonment in any
territory under its jurisdiction—are designed to preventing any cases of
ill-treatment. Article 12 requires each state party proceed to a prompt and
impartial investigation, wherever there is reasonable ground to believe that an
act of ill treatment has been committed. And article 13 requires that each
state party shall ensure that any individual who alleges he/she has been
subjected to ill treatment has the right to complain to, and to have his case
promptly and impartially examined by, its competent authorities.

[231]
It should be noted that, even for families who are located relatively close to
family members, the visit still constitutes a significant journey, both in
terms of the cost and the difficulty. Ground transportation to prisons is often
arduous. Families must expend precious resources on the journey. And even
prisons that are relatively close can necessitate a journey of several days.

[252]
UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, “Substantive Issues
Arising in the Implementation of the International Covenant on Economic, Social
and Cultural Rights,” General Comment No. 14, The Right to the Highest
Attainable Standard of Health, E/C.12/2000/4 (2000), http://www.unhchr.ch/tbs/doc.nsf/(Symbol)/40d009901358b0e2c1256915005090be?Opendocument
(accessed August 15, 2009), para. 34.

[270]
“The practice [of solitary confinement] has a clearly documented negative
impact on mental health, and therefore should be used only in exceptional
circumstances or when absolutely necessary for criminal investigation purposes.
In all cases, solitary confinement should be used for the shortest period of
time.” United Nations General Assembly, Interim Report of the Special
Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or
punishment, UN Doc. A/63/175, July 28, 2008, p. 2.

“It is generally acknowledged that all forms of
solitary confinement without appropriate mental and physical stimulation are
likely, in the long-term, to have damaging effects resulting in deterioration
of mental faculties and social abilities.” The European Committee for the
Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT),
“Report to the Finnish Government on the Visit to Finland carried out by
the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading
Treatment or Punishment (CPT) from 10 to 20 May 1992,” CPT/Inf (93) 8,
Strasbourg, April 1, 1993, p. 26.

“The principle of proportionality calls for a
balance to be struck between the requirement of the situation and the
imposition of a solitary confinement-type regime, which can have very harmful
consequences for the person concerned. Solitary confinement can in certain
circumstances amount to inhuman and degrading treatment; in any event, all
forms of solitary confinement should last for as short a time as
possible.” CPT, “Report to the Icelandic Government on the
Visit to Iceland carried out by the CPT from 6 to 12 July 1993,”
CPT/Inf (94) 8, Strasbourg, June 28, 1994, p. 26.

[276]
"Every prisoner shall be allowed to make a request or complaint, without
censorship as to substance but in proper form, to the central prison
administration, the judicial authority or other proper authorities through
approved channels." UN Standard Minimum Rules, art. 36, para. 3.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), art. 8
and the Convention against Torture, arts. 2(1) and 4(1), obligate Cuba to
provide an effective remedy for the violations of fundamental rights. The UDHR
states that, "Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent
national tribunal for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the
constitution or by law."

[285]
CCDHRN, “The Human Rights Situation in Cuba After Three Years of Changes
in the Highest Levels of the Government,” August 10, 2009,
http://www.lexingtoninstitute.org/library/resources/documents/cuba/otherresources/CubaCCHRNRReportISemester2009.pdf
(accessed February 12, 2009).

[291]
“Rapid response brigades” (brigadas de respuesta rápida)
were formed in advance of the 1991 Pan American Games, in order to provide the
Cuban government with a fast response force to counteract any demonstrations by
critics of the government in the presence of international media. See Benigno
E. Aguirre, “Social Control in Cuba,” Latin American Politics
and Society, vol. 44, no. 2, Summer 2002, pp. 78-79.

[292]
On February 24, 1996, the Cuban Air Force shot down two civilian planes from
the Miami-based group, Brothers to the Rescue. Four Cuban Americans on board
were killed. The group had worked to rescue Cubans adrift in the Straits of
Florida (the body of water between Cuba and the Florida Keys) while trying to
make the journey by water to the United States, and had also staged protest
flights over the island, such as one dropping copies of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights and condemning Fidel Castro. The group claimed they
were attacked over international waters; Cuba said they were not. Larry Rohter,
“Cuba Blames US in Downing of Planes,” The New York Times,
February 27, 1996,
http://www.nytimes.com/1996/02/27/world/cuba-blames-us-in-downing-of-planes.html
(accessed July 17, 2009); Bárbara Crossette, “US Says Cubans Knew
They Fired on Civilian Planes,” The New York Times, February 28,
1996,
http://www.nytimes.com/1996/02/28/world/us-says-cubans-knew-they-fired-on-civilian-planes.html
(accessed July 17, 2009).

[295]
Human Rights Watch telephone interview with Juan Francisco Sigler Amaya, Cuba,
February 12, 2009. Juan Francisco was a licensed economist until he was fired
from his job for his economic ideas, which he said his superiors deemed
“Gorbachev-esque” (Gorbachista), and was assigned to work on
a sugar plantation, a field in which he had no previous experience.

[297]
Human Rights Watch telephone interview with Enyor Díaz Allen, Cuba,
March 14, 2009. Enyor Díaz Allen, a member of Youth for Democracy
(Jóvenes por la Democracia), was arrested on August 30, 2008, in a
public park in Guantánamo, where he was publicly voicing criticisms of
the Cuban government.

[298]
Human Rights Watch telephone interview with Niover García Fournier, the
brother of Yordis, Cuba, March 14, 2009. García Fournier and Poveda
Silva were sentenced on September 4, 2008 to one year, and one year and four
months, respectively, both for the charge of desacato.

[299]
Human Rights Watch telephone interview with Ana Margarita Perdigón
Brito, sister of Raymundo, Cuba, March 4, 2009. Perdigón’s father
had to be taken to a medical clinic for treatment for injuries he sustained in
the attack. Ana Margarita and her father were attacked a second time as they
left the clinic.

[300]
Human Rights Watch telephone interviews with Ramona Sánchez
Ramírez, Cuba, March 13 and 14, 2009. The attack on Sánchez and
other peaceful protestors took place during the appeal of Yordis García
Fournier and Isael Poveda Silva. The incident was confirmed in a Human
Rights Watch telephone interview with Niover García Fournier, brother of
Yordis García Fournier, in Cuba, on March 14, 2009 who was also part of
the peaceful gathering that was attacked.

[324]
Fines (multas) for individual violations are generally given a range in
shares (cuotas) that may be assigned. Shares are the unit of fines, and
they may range from 50 cents to 20 pesos. It is up to the tribunal to determine
the number of shares and the share value for each fine. For example, resistance
(resistencia) may carry a fine of 100 to 300 shares. That means the fine
assigned could range from 50 pesos to 6,000 pesos, depending on the
determination of the judge.

[328]
Hoarding, an offense that carries a penalty of three months to a year in
prison, a fine of 300 shares, or both—may be applied to anyone in
possession of an amount of a product, “unjustifiably exceeding the
requirements for his/her normal necessities,” a vague and ill-defined
quantity. Criminal Code, art. 230.

[337]
“B Denied His Exit Visa for the International Competition of the
‘Battle of the Roosters’ hosted by Red Bull,” Los Aldeanos,
press announcement, November 21, 2008, http://losaldeanos.wordpress.com/2009/03/13/el-b-negado-su-permiso-de-salida-para-la-competencia-internacional-de-“la-batalla-de-los-gallos”-de-red-bull/,
(accessed September 15, 2009).

[338]
Almieda is the son of the Cuban revolutionary commander and Vice President Juan
Almeida Bosque, who died on September 11, 2009.

[376] Human
Rights Watch interview with Roberto Marrero la Rosa and his wife, Marlenes
Bermudez Sardinas, Cuba, June 2009. His daughter-in-law has since been unable
to find work, despite having applied for several jobs. She has repeatedly been
told that she was not suitable (idónea).